Ó Murchadha The chief of the O’Murphys uses that form of the name. IF 235; Map Wex

The name Murphy is easily the most widely held surname in Ireland and as such appears in large numbers wherever Irishmen have emigrated. It has also long been found in Scotland, but it is not indigenous there, its presence being due solely to early immigration.

There were three original family clans (or septs) of this name, in Wexford, Roscommon and Cork, where there are still more Murphys per head of population than anywhere else. Once upon a time the forms MacMurphy and O’Murphy (both meaning ‘son of Murphy’) were widespread, but the prefixes have generally been dropped. The MacMurphys were originally found mainly in Armagh and Tyrone.

The name Murphy came from the Irish Gaelic O’Murchadha which derives from the first name Murchadh, meaning ‘sea warrior’. It is thus possible that some, but certainly not all, of the original Murphys may have been of Viking origin.

An early form of the name Murphy is Morchoe (or O’Morchoe). This is still in use, and the chief of the O’Murphys is called O’Morchoe.

Unlike most names derived from the Gaelic, Murphy has few variants. The alternative spelling Murphey is still found, but it is in no way as popular as Murphy.

The name Murphy does not appear in early English records, and the name did not come to England in any significant numbers until the great Irish immigration of the eighteenth century.

In 1952 amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein put a young housewife Virginia Tighe (b.1923) into a deep trance. Thus began one of the strangest controversies of the century. Tighe proceeded to recount in great detail her former life as an Irishwoman named Bridey Murphy, born in Cork in 1798. She supplied details of that time and place no modern young American could be expected to know, such as slang expressions and the title of a book which, it turned out, had been published in Ireland but not in the US. Bernstein’s account of his experiment, The Search for Bridey Murphy, instantly became a best-seller, with 170,500 copies in print within two months. However, Life magazine, through its own investigations, revealed that in childhood one of Mrs Tighe’s neighbours had been a Mrs Corkell, maiden name Bridey Murphy. That revelation, plus other inconsistencies in Bridey’s recollections, cooled the public’s interest but the episode raised questions that have yet to be satisfactorily answered.

Murphys have made a major impact on medicine. American doctor William Murphy shared a Nobel Prize with two others for his discovery that raw liver cured pernicious anaemia, while American surgeon John Benjamin Murphy was a pioneer in the study and treatment of peritonitis, and invented the Murphy Button (1892), a device for linking severed intestinal ends thus enabling important advances in gastrointestinal surgery. Artificial lung collapse (by the injection of nitrogen, instrumental in the treatment of tuberculosis) was another Murphy innovation.

Marie Louise Murphy (1733—1814) rose from being a draper’s daughter to become Louis XV’s mistress. Madame de Pompadour stage-managed the whole affair by arranging to have the King meet Marie Louise while she posed at Versailles as the Virgin for a portrait of the Holy Family. When the king tired of her she was replaced in his affections by her sister, Marie Brigette.

Irish-born Arthur Murphy was an eighteenth-century all- rounder. As publisher of the Gray’s Inn Journal he got to know Dr Johnson, later writing an Essay on Johnson. When he encountered financial reverses he took to the stage, so successfully that he was able to pay off his debts; then he began to both write and produce plays on his own. After entering Lincoln’s Inn in 1757 he was called to the Bar and practised law successfully while finding time to publish a highly regarded translation of Tacitus.

Few related place and major geographical feature names attach to Murphy. The United States has 3 towns called Murphy, one Murphys, and one Murphysboro as well as a Murphy Lake, while Antarctica has a Mount Murphy.

With about 10,000 namesakes Murphy is Scotland’s 72nd most popular surname. Thus about one out of every 510 Scots is named Murphy. In Ireland about 66,000 Murphys make this the country’s most popular surname. (The name is not common enough throughout England and Wales to be counted separately.) Around the world Murphys are most common in Canberra (one in 605 families), Ottawa (one in 655), Sydney (one in 694) and Brisbane (one in 801). The United States has more Murphys than the entire population of Newcastle-an estimated total of just over 327,000 makes this their 51st most popular surname.