Woulfe gives Ó Reachtabhair as the Gaelic Irish form of this name and says that it is a variant of O'Raftery. In this, no doubt, he is right in cases where families of the name are located in Mayo and adjacent parts of Connacht. Birth indices indicate that about one-third of the people so called belong to Connacht. The other two thirds however (ignoring metropolitan Dublin whose population is made up of families originating in all four provinces) are associated with a midland area centred in Kilkenny.

Though I can cite no traditional evidence for the existence of a distinct O'Rafter sept in that part of the country, there are many small septs unrecorded by the genealogists, and the existence of such a sept is much more probable than the alternative possibility that a large section of a Mayo sept migrated to Co. Kilkenny. Some evidently did move northwards to Donegal as the annals of that county contain the name O'Raghter, Apart from a reference in a 1295 Judiciary Roll to a John Orathcor, cattle thief, whose dwelling place may have been in Co. Cork and who was probably not an O'Rafter at all, the earliest mention of the name I have found is to Thomas Raghtour, burgess of Kilkenny in 1518, of which city Thomas Raghtor was sovereign (or mayor) in 1589. It occurs also in Co. Kilkenny with the prefix O, e.g. in the person of Shane O'Raghtore, who received a “pardon” in 1597. In 1659 Rafter is recorded as a “principal Irish name” in Co. Leix, and Raghter in the barony of Kilkea, Co. Kildare, which adjoins Co. Leix, and in the same so-called “census” James Rafter is listed among the chief citizens of Kilkenny. Wills and other sources confirm the association of the name Rafter with Kilkenny since the seventeenth century. For example, three Rafters appear in the lists of Jacobite outlawries, two of Kilkenny city and county, one of Naas. A little later, in 1713, Ignatius Raffter, of Kilkenny city, was one of the Catholic gentlemen licensed to carry a sword, a gun and a case of pistols. In the nineteenth century Griffith's Valuation indicates that it was numerous in Counties Kilkenny, Offaly and Leix, especially Kilkenny. There we find the synonym Raftiss accounting for more than a third of the 32 householders listed. This has a particular interest because it illustrates the pronunciation of the final slender R in the Irish language as it was spoken in Co. Kilkenny a century ago-a sound something between R and Z.

Though it has an English appearance in its modern anglicized forms of Rafter and Wrafter, no such indigenous English surname appears to exist and it may therefore be taken as reasonably certain that all persons in Ireland so called are of native Irish origin.

*In addition to the numerous variants beginning with G and Q the following have also been noted: Mac Wiggin, Mac Wiggan, Wigan, Fidgeon, and Pidgeon.