This surname is derived from a geographical locality. 'of Barry.' There can be little doubt that this was of Norman extraction; compare the French Du Barry. The Irish Barrys have made a large inroad in the American directories. I cannot say whether they are of the same parentage or not.

John de Barry, Somerset, 1 Edward III: Kirby's Quest.

Isabella Barri, Somerset, 1 Edward III: ibid.

Robert Barry, Nottinghamshire, Henry III-Edward I: Testa de Nevill, sive Liber Feodorum, temp. Henry III-Edward I.

William Barry, Nottinghamshire, ibid.

Hugh Barry, Buckinghamshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Geoffrey Barri, Lincolnshire, ibid.

(French) belonging to Barry (France) = the Farm; also a Barrier, Rampart, or Gateway. [Old French bari, barri] Dans le département de l'Hérault on appelle encore borie et barry des fermes et des métairies.—Cocheris, Noms de Lieu, p. 98.

Barry occurs in the copies of the Roll of Battle Abbey. (Scot.-Celt.) = Barrie, q.v.

(Celtic + Teutonic) Son of Harry. [Welsh ab-Harry: v. Harry]

De Barra The great majority of this name are of Norman origin; they became completely hibernicized.

The name Barry is also the anglicized form of the Gaelic Ó Beargha, a small sept of west Munster. IF 52 etc; Map Cork: Plate 1

Place name in France. Scottish version Barrie.

(Scottish, Irish) One who came from Barry (height on the isle), in Angus; one who was diligent; descendant of Barry (spear).

“Camden, in his Britannia, says that this name is derived from the island of Barry, in Glamorganshire (so called from Baruch, a holy man buried there); but the common ancestor is considered to be William Barry (otherwise de Barri), who married Angareth, daughter to Nesta, the daughter of Rhese ap Griffith, Prince of South Wales, and sister to Robert Fitz Stephen and Maurice Fitz Gerald, two persons of great eminence in the annals of Ireland. “This Nesta had been a concubine to Henry I., and afterwards married Stephen, Constable of the castles of Cardigan and Pembroke: by which Stephen she had a son, Robert Fitz-Stephen, and a daughter, this Angareth. She also married Gerald Fitz- Walter, and by him had issue Maurice Fitz-Gerald, progenitor of the Duke of Leinster, and other great families in Ireland.”— Ibid. By her the said William had issue several sons, viz. Robert, Philip, Walter, and Gerald or Gerard Barry, well known by the name of Giraldus Cambrensis, and so denominated from the word Cambria, the ancient name of the county of Pembroke, within which he was born at Tenby, about the year 1146. He was afterwards Bishop of St. David’s, and wrote a description of England, Ireland, and Wales.”—Banks. His name marks a distinct epoch in the history of English literature. “Gerald is the father of our popular literature, as he is the originator of the political and ecclesiastical pamphlet. Welsh blood mixed with Norman in his veins, and something of the restless Celtic fire runs alike through his writings and his life. A busy scholar at Paris, a reforming archdeacon in Wales, the wittiest of Court chaplains, the most troublesome of bishops, Gerald became the gayest and most amusing of all the authors of his time. In his hands the stately Latin tongue took the vivacity and picturesqueness of the jougleur's verse. Reared as he had been in classical studies, he threw pedantry contemptuously aside. ‘It is better to be dumb than not to be understood,’ is his characteristic apology for the novelty of his style; ‘new times require new fashions, and so I have thrown utterly aside the old and dry method of some authors.’ .... His tract on the conquest of Ireland and his account of Wales, illustrate his rapid faculty of careless observation, his audacity, and his good sense .... His profusion of jests, his fund of anecdote, the aptness of his quotations, his natural shrewdness and critical acumen, the clearness and vivacity of his style, are backed by a fearlessness and impetuosity that made him a dangerous assailant even to such a ruler as Henry II.”—Green.

In recounting the conquest of Ireland, Cambrensis gives a great character to his elder brother Robert, “a young knight of courage and resolution,” who was conspicuous among the conquerors, serving under the banner of his maternal uncle, Robert Fitz Stephen. Sir William Pole claims him as a Devonshire man. “He was, as one proveth, a native of this county, and so it may well be, for that name was possessed of large and fair inheritance in the time of the three first Edwards, and their armories yet in many places extant. He was one of the chief conquerors of that kingdom; of whom I find this special remembrance:—He chose rather among the first to be chief indeed than seem chief. He, in winning Ireland, put himself into sundry dangers and received many wounds, yet was the first that brought the hawk to hand.”

Banks, on the other hand, places his domicile at the opposite extremity of England. “After his services in Ireland, he is represented to have seated himself at Sevington, in Kent; but however that may be, he returned again to Ireland, and about the year 1185 was killed at Lismore in the county of Waterford.” He was succeeded by his next brother Philip, who “had a grant of three contreds of land in the county of Cork from his uncle, Robert Fitz- Stephen, whose daughter, it is said, he married. This Philip built the castle of Barry’s Court, and endowed the friery of Ballybeg, co. Cork, ‘in memory whereof his effigies on horseback were cast in brass, and set up in the church there.’” He had two sons, William and Robert; to which William, King John confirmed his uncle’s gift of lands. He is said to have been one of the Recognitores Magnæ Assizæ of the county of Kent, and to have lived at the Moate, where several of his successors, who were lieutenants of Dover Castle, and conservators of the peace in that county, had their residence. The Magna Britannia, p. 1125, relates that the daughter and heir of Robert Barry, of this line, carried the manor of Sevington, by marriage, into the family of Ratcliffe.

“But it seems,” continues Banks, “that Robert Barry, younger brother of William, founded the honours of the family.” The Irish estates had been made over to him by agreement; and his grandson David, Viscount of Buttevant, “a rich noble baron,” was appointed by Henry III. in 1267 Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and forced into subjection the turbulent MacCarthys and Geraldines. From him came another David, who, with other great Irish landowners, had summons to attend the parliament held at Westminster in 35 Edward III. “But, though Sir William Dugdale has included this summons to an extraordinary council among his list of summons of the barons to parliament, it cannot be from thence concluded, that David Barry has any pretension to be ranked in the number of English nobility.”—Ibid.

The Barrys had no further connection with England, and though, as a rule, they remained loyal to English interests, became thoroughly naturalized in their Celtic home. They had great possessions, and lived in lavish splendour. One of them (according to Sir Bernard Burke) gave an entire barony (or English hundred) to an Earl of Desmond as the marriage portion of his daughter. Another, who sat as Premier Viscount in the Irish Parliament of 1490, fell by the hand of his own brother. No uglier story is to be met with even in those troubled and terrible annals. The ruffian that shed his brother’s blood was a consecrated priest!—more than that, one of the highest dignitaries of the Irish Church; for he was Archbishop of Cork and Cloyne. He, in his turn, was murdered by a third brother, Thomas Barry; and after his body had laid in the grave for twenty days, it was dug up and publicly burned at the ferocious command of Maurice Earl of Desmond.

In the time of James I., David Fitz-James, Viscount Buttevant, who, after beginning life as a rebel, had done good service subsequently to the Crown, received a grant of great part of the MacCarthy lands. His grandson and successor was created Earl of Barrymore in 1628; and the line was carried on to the present century, only expiring with the eighth Earl in 1824. His predecessor, though a man of some talent, had made himself notorious “by freaks which would have disgraced Buckingham or Rochester, until the accidental explosion of his musket, while he was conveying some French prisoners from Folkestone to Dover, as captain of the Berkshire Militia, put an end to his troubles and follies in 1793.”—Sir Egerton Brydges.

This ancient stock is still represented by collateral branches.

In some instances from the Welsh ab Harry, the son of Henry; but the Barrys of Roclaveston, co. Notts., claim to be descended from Godfridus, who flourished at Teversal, in that shire, temp. Will. I. In the H.R. the surname appears without a prefix. There is a parish of Barry in co. Forfar.

Local. From the Barry Islands in Glamorganshire, Wales; so called, says Bailey, from Baruch, a devout man who was interred there.

Armorially identified with Barr. Sir Philip de Barre, t. John, witnessed the charter of Fermoy Abbey (Mon. ii. 1046). He was ancestor of the Viscounts Buttevant, Earls of Barrymore.

A Norman name: Berry; a local name

Barry: in Leland as Barry and Barray. From de Barre, in the Cotentin, possibly. But probably an interpolation, named later from Barrey Isle, near Cardiff. But perhaps a mistake for Barrett, which is a name found in Domesday.