O'NEILL. Of the very great antiquity of this distinguished name and family there can be no doubt. At what period the particular ancestor from whom the surname is borrowed flourished, it is hard to say, although a. definite date is assigned to him by the Irish genealogists. According to them, he lived in the fourth century of the Christian Era, and was fifty-third in descent from the founder of his race, who existed within about a centurj' and a half of the Deluge 1 How or when such statements came to be invented and received, I know not. That they are honestly believed by many Irishmen I do know. And it is not with anj' desire of disturbing family prejudices and accepted traditions, much less of derogating from the high antiquity and distinguished historical associations of the O'Neills, but simply as a matter of literary and historical criticism, that I beg to demur to the following statements, set down in good faith, in a well-known publication of recent date.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.