Butler
The cellarer's name, and the Earls of Ormond of Kilkenny.
- Origin
- London, England
- Motto
- Comme je trouve
- Famous bearer
- Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond ("Black Tom", 1531–1614)
- Register
- English family
Ranked of all time
The 10 Most Powerful Irish Clans of All Time
This name is thick on both sides of the border, so the map shows the whole of the British Isles with every region it touches highlighted. It is a regional pattern for the surname, not proof that your branch lived in each place.
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Butler
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Butler community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Butler has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Butler clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Butler clan →Motto
Comme je trouve
“As I find”
What does the Butler name mean?
Occupational, butteler, wine-cellar officer. Anglo-Norman noble households froze the office into surname. The senior line in these islands is the Anglo-Norman Butler family who came to Ireland with King John in 1185 and rose to be the Earls of Ormond from 1328, the Anglo-Irish house of the late mediaeval period and the great rivals of the FitzGerald earls of Desmond. The English-Butler population overwhelmingly descends from the same noble-household occupational frame.
The history of Butler
A great lord's butler guarded the buttery, not butter, but the butts of wine, the power to pour at high table. The office married trust and theatre; petty chronicles name butlers who bankrupted earls by embezzlement and others who died shielding their lord. When the job title froze into surname, it marked households that had once tasted castle air, however distantly.
The senior Butler line in these islands was the Hiberno-Norman Butler family, hereditary chief butlers of the lordship of Ireland from the grant of King John to Theobald Walter in 1185 (whence the surname). Their descendants the Butlers of Ormond rose to the earldom of Ormond in 1328 and were, alongside the FitzGerald earls of Desmond, the Anglo-Irish noble house of the late mediaeval period. The Butlers held Kilkenny Castle as their principal seat from 1391 until 1967, when the eighteenth Marquess of Ormonde transferred the castle to the Irish state. Many modern Butlers in Ireland descend from the rural tenants of the long Butler estates of the south-east, several million bear the name globally.
Champions of the Butler name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has its own page — biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
Also found in
The Butler name has substantial historical presence beyond England. See it on Ireland.
Step Into History
Walk the streets and seats the Butler name knew — a photoreal walk through time, on foot.
Step Into History · New
The cathedral citadel of the Kings of Munster, whole and roofed on its rock — round tower, Cormac's Chapel and Gothic cathedral.
Step Into History · New
St Paul's, Covent Garden and the gaslit West End — Regency London, soot-hazed and horse-drawn.
Notable bearers of the Butler name
- Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond ("Black Tom", 1531–1614)
- James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde (1610–1688), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland