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MacLoughlin
The surname MacLoughlin, also spelled MacLaughlin, is used in modern Ireland as the anglicized form of that of two entirely distinct Gaelic septs, both of considerable importance. One indeed which was of royal status, is not a Mac name at all but an O name, being O Maoilsheachlainn in Irish, and up to the end of the seventeenth century always anglicized O'Melaghlin (with some slight variants). They are descended from maoilsheachlainn, better known as Malachy II, King of Ireland from 980 to 1002, when he was dethroned by the great Brian Boru. Maoilsheachlainn signified servant or follower of Seachlainn, I.e St. Secundinus. Malachy was of the race of Niall of the Nine Hostages. After the Anglo-Norman invasion the O'Melaghlins, like all the Gaelic princes and chiefs of Meath and central Ireland, were greatly reduced in power. In 1543 they were still strong enough to be named in an order establishing martial law in the midland counties (see entry for Dunn) but in each of the successive waves of invasion, especially in the seventeenth century, they further declined, till after 1691 they disappear altogether as O'Melaghlins, and the remnant of the sept remaining in their ancestral territory where thereafter known as MacLoughlin. Surprisingly, MacLoughlin is one of the most numerous names in the Tipperary Hearth Money Rolls (1665). One of their descendants has of late years done a great deal of research on the O'Melaghlin genealogy and the pedigrees of their present day MacLoughlin representatives: the results of his work are deposited in the Genealogical Office (Office of Arms), Dublin Castle.
Turning to the MacLoughlins proper, we have another powerful and important sept, or at least one which can be so described up to the thirteenth century, when they too declined in influence. This sept was called Mac Lochlainn in Irish, I.e son of Lochlainn, a forename of Norse origin, which does not, however, imply that the family as itself of Norse stock: the MacLoughlins of Ulster were, in fact, a senior branch of the northern Ui Neill and their territory was in Innishowen (Co. Donegal). At the present time the name, which is very numerous, is found chiefly in Counties Donegal and Derry. In Dublin the name appears as MacGloughlin, presumably from the variant forms in Irish, Mag Lochlainn.
Up to 1241, when the MacLochlainn ascendancy in Ulster was finally ended at a battle of that date, the leading men of this sept are mentioned continuously in the Annals of our mediaeval history, as are the O'Melaghlins of Meath; but subsequently no outstanding figure of the name appears in any phase of national activity, though the branch of the Ulster sept, which had settled in Co. Leitrim under the O'Rourkes, was sufficiently established there to be included among the chieftains of that county in the Composition Book of Connacht (1585). In modern times the most notable person of the name was John MacLoughlin (1784-1857), of Hudson Bay Company Fame.