The site was first set up as a list of 'famous Mahers' several years ago after I began receiving e-mails from other Mahers. Our name is sufficiently unusual to attract attention; we are sometimes taken for Germans or Arabs, and the name is frequently spelled or pronounced incorrectly. To settle these matters: our name is from Tipperary Ireland, though there is a phonetic Arabic equivalent, and we pronounce the name with a silent 'her', as Marr. However some people insist on a two syllable pronounciation, as Ma-her. Please, not Meyer! My Irish relatives from Borris-in-Ossory used the silent version.

Not only do people get our name wrong - they also mistakenly spell our house name in Bristol with an 'm' rather than an 'n'; and that includes Irish people! The name is Shanboe, named after the townland of Shanboe just outside of Borris-in-Ossory, Laois, Ireland, and the site of the ancestral farm. There are no longer any Mahers on the farm since it was sold when my uncle Kieran Maher died over twenty years ago.

A section dealing with our family genealogy was not originally planned, but the situation on Shanboe at the turn of the 19th century is sufficiently interesting to persuade me to delve further.

If you have the surname 'Maher', 'Meagher', one of the other versions, or know of the townland of Shanboe just outside Borris-in-Ossory, Co. Laois, Ireland, or have any comments, corrections, or better still additions, please

Updated 25th January 2005