Quinn
also Ó Coinn, O'Quinn
Of Conn the Hundred-Battler, three distinct lordships, one Anglicised name.
- Origin
- Ulster, Ireland
- Motto
- Quae sursum volo videre
- Famous bearer
- Anthony Quinn (1915–2001), actor, Zorba the Greek
- Register
- Irish family
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Quinn
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Quinn 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 Quinn has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Quinn 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 Quinn clan →Motto
Quae sursum volo videre
“I wish to see heavenly things”
What does the Quinn name mean?
From Ó Coinn, descendant of Conn. Conn is among the great Old Irish personal names, born by Conn Cétchathach, Conn of the Hundred Battles, the legendary 2nd-century high king from whom most of the great northern Irish dynasties traced descent. Several distinct Ó Coinn kindreds gave rise to the modern Quinns: the Tyrone Quinns of the Cenél nEóghain, the Thomond Quinns of Clare (close kin of the O'Briens), and the Longford Quinns of Annaly. All Anglicised independently as Quinn by the 17th century.
The history of Quinn
Quinn is among the top twenty Irish surnames, with strong density in the Ulster heartland and a parallel concentration in north Munster. The Thomond Ó Coinn, the Quinns of Inchiquin in Clare, were the principal cadet branch of the O'Briens of Thomond, holding the lands around Lough Inchiquin near Corofin from the 12th century and providing the earldom-of-Thomond cadet line into the early modern period. Their seat at Inchiquin Castle is now a ruin on the lake's western shore.
Anthony Quinn (1915–2001), the Mexican-Irish actor who won two Academy Awards in the 1950s and is most associated with the role of Zorba the Greek (1964), descended from a County Cork-Quinn line of mid-19th-century emigration to Mexico. Aidan Quinn (b. 1959), the American actor, is a Chicago-born Quinn whose father was a Tyrone-Quinn emigrant of the 1950s. The Quinn surname is heavily distributed across the American and Australian-Irish diaspora and has produced an outsized share of contemporary Irish public figures across politics, sport and entertainment.
Champions of the Quinn name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has its own page — biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
Step Into History
Walk the streets and seats the Quinn name knew — a photoreal walk through time, on foot.
Step Into History · New
The MacDonnell stronghold on its Antrim sea-stack, whole and inhabited — Clan Donald astride the North Channel.
Step Into History · New
The O'Brien Earls of Thomond's great four-towered tower-house, hung with banners and famed for its feasts.
Notable bearers of the Quinn name
- Anthony Quinn (1915–2001), actor, Zorba the Greek
- Aidan Quinn (b. 1959), actor
- Niall Quinn (b. 1966), Irish footballer
- Pat Quinn (1948–2014), Governor of Illinois