Doherty
also O'Doherty, Ó Dochartaigh, Dougherty
Lords of Inishowen — and the revolt that triggered the Plantation of Ulster.
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Doherty
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Doherty.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
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Stake your name →What does the Doherty name mean?
From Ó Dochartaigh — descendant of Dochartach. The personal name Dochartach means 'obstructive' or 'hurtful' — the kind of edged Old Irish byname applied to a man hard to deal with, presumably an honorific in the warrior register in which the surnames froze. The eponymous Dochartach was a tenth-century chief of the Cenél Conaill, the kindred from which the Tír Chonaill royal house also descended. The Ó Dochartaigh ruled the Inishowen peninsula — the great triangular fist of land between Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly — as effectively a sub-kingdom of Tír Chonaill from c.1200 to 1608.
The history of Doherty
Cahir Ó Dochartaigh — Cathaoir Rua Ó Dochartaigh (1587–1608) — was the last Gaelic lord of Inishowen and a man who, more than any other single figure, lit the fuse on the Plantation of Ulster. Knighted as a teenager by Mountjoy in 1601 for siding with the English against Hugh O'Neill, Cahir governed Inishowen quietly through the post-Mellifont years. In April 1608, after a quarrel with the new English governor of Derry, Sir George Paulet, who had publicly insulted him, Cahir rose without warning, took Culmore Fort, sacked and burnt the Plantation town of Derry to the ground in a single night, and held Inishowen for ten weeks against everything Dublin Castle could send north.
He was killed at Kilmacrenan in July 1608, shot in the head by a single ball at close range during a skirmish with English cavalry. He was twenty-one. His head was sent to Dublin and spiked over the Castle gate; his lands were forfeited. Three months later, in October 1608, the formal Plantation of Ulster was proposed in Whitehall. Six counties — including Inishowen — were settled on Lowland Scots and English Protestant tenants from 1610. The pattern of Ulster history for the next four centuries was set, in significant part, by a twenty-one-year-old Doherty's furious response to a personal insult.
Notable bearers of the Doherty name
- Sir Cahir O'Doherty (1587–1608) — last Gaelic lord of Inishowen, burnt Derry 1608
- Pete Doherty (b. 1979) — musician (The Libertines), Liverpool-Doherty diaspora
- Shannen Doherty (1971–2024) — American actress