How many (O)Boyles are there?

Whatever its origins, (O)Boyle is now about the 50th most common surname in Ireland. It is most numerous in Donegal where it is the 3rd most frequent name (after Gallagher and Doherty and about equal with O'Donnell). A quick perusal of Irish telephone directories [in the 1990s, when landline telephone directories were still a fairly accurate population sample before the coming of mobile phones] showed that Boyle is much more common than O'Boyle. In the directory covering counties Donegal, Sligo, Mayo and Galway, there were nearly 1,000 entries, over 80% of them for Boyle and less than 20% for O’Boyle. Dublin, with nearly 400 entries had similar proportions - over three hundred Boyles but only 67 O'Boyles. However, in Mayo the reverse was true – there were over 100 entries for O’Boyle and only about 60 for Boyle.

It has been estimated that at the turn of the millennium there were just under 11,000 (83%) Boyles and about 2,100 (17%) O’Boyles in Ireland, representing 24.7 per 10,000 people in the population of 5.3 million This gives a rank of 57th in frequency. The regional distribution is unfortunately fairly crude, being based on telephone areas. It shows that 16% are in the Dublin area, 11% in eastern Ireland, 6% in southern, 34% in west/north-west (which includes Donegal) and 33% in Northern Ireland [Murphy 2014]. Not surprisingly, there has been some shift in the distribution when compared to the earliest reliable records in the 1850s.

Though the two datasets cannot be compared directly, it seems that the main differences are the decrease in the proportion of the Boyle population living in Donegal and the west, from about 50% to 34%, and an increase in the proportion resident in Dublin (from about 1% to 16%) and Northern Ireland (from about 25% to 33%). This represents a not surprising movement away from rural areas towards the cities, Dublin especially but also to Belfast and to Derry/Londonderry whose growth in the late 19th century attracted large numbers from its Donegal hinterland.

Due to mass migration in the 19th and 20th centuries, the name has spread throughout the world – mainly in English-speaking countries, but there are few countries where the name does not exist at all, and it is estimated that there are about 120,000 Boyles and O’Boyles worldwide [Data from https://forebears.io/surnames though I doubt the accuracy of some of the information. This website has a map showing the incidence of the name throughout the world. Boyle, O’Boyle and OBoyle are treated as separate names and need to be searched separately].

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In terms of absolute numbers, the greatest frequency is in the United States, where there are over 50,000 bearers of the name, 46,226 Boyles and 3,855 O’Boyles, and it is ranked about the 800th most popular family name. In every 100k US citizens, there are about 16 Boyles or O’Boyles [US Census].

England and Wales have about 17,000, and Scotland, where many Donegal people settled, has over 10,000. Over three hundred Boyles (and 21 O'Boyles) were listed in the London telephone directory in the 1990s.

But what of the past? The early Gaelic documents up to the end of the 16th century sometimes mention a member of the (O)Boyle sept in a part of the country beyond Tirconaill, but there are no systematic records to suggest that the (O)Boyles were anywhere in significant numbers beyond their ancestral lands in Donegal or on neighbouring territory.

Of course, there could have been some amount of unrecorded movement, as it is known that their O’Donnell overlords had trading links with the European continent in the 1400s, and that Irish mercenaries were fighting there in the early 1500s, if not earlier. Military service, either on a mercenary basis or as a result of agreement between chieftains could take people away from their home base. Ecclesiastical networks may also have enabled some territorial diversity.

But it’s fairly certain that nearly all (O)Boyles were still living in Donegal up to the end of the 16th century. The Pardon Rolls issued to the Earl of Tyrconnell in 1603 lists 43 (O)Boyles. These are likely to be the leading members of the sept; each would have had a household of six to ten people and probably sub-tenants and landless labourers, also (O)Boyles, the ‘poor relations’ so to speak. The total population of (O)Boyles could easily run into the hundreds, or maybe a thousand or two.

The loss of the ancestral homeland and the collapse of the Gaelic social order from about 1600 did not immediately displace the majority of the sept, but the bonds to the territory were loosened, and over the succeeding centuries (O)Boyles are seen to spread more widely within Ireland and abroad.

Signposts

Petty's Census