Loftus, Dudley
Loftus, Dudley (1618–95), Oriental scholar and jurist, was born at Rathfarnham castle, Co. Dublin, a son of Sir Adam Loftus, vice-treasurer of Ireland, and his wife Jane, daughter of Walter Vaughan of Golden Grove, Carmarthenshire, Wales. He received his …...
Luce, John Victor
Luce, John Victor (1920–2011), classicist, was born on 21 May 1920 in Dublin, the elder of two sons of Arthur Aston Luce (qv), then professor of moral philosophy in TCD, and his wife Lilian Mary (née Thompson), a philosophy graduate…...
Lynam, Sybil Mary Joan (‘Shevawn’)
Lynam, Sybil Mary Joan (‘Shevawn’) (1914–98), administrator, author, and linguist, was born 16 April 1914 in Dublin, daughter of Charles Lynam, engineer, and Margaret (‘Mai’) Lynam (née Moran), both from Co. Galway. Her father served in the first world war as an officer in the…...
Lynch, Patrick (Ó Loingsigh, Pádraig
Lynch, Patrick (Ó Loingsigh, Pádraig ) (1754/7–1818), schoolmaster and scholar was born 17 March in either 1754 or 1757, in Quin, Co. Clare. He attended a hedge school for his early education in Ennistymon, Co. Clare, where his teacher, Donnchadh ‘an Chairn’ Ó Mathghamhna, taught Latin…...
Lythe, Robert
Lythe, Robert (d. c. 1574), cartographer, was first recorded in 1556 when he was employed by the auditor of Calais, John Challoner (qv), to map the surrounding English Pale. Chaloner, a client of Sir William…...
Mac An Lega, Uilliam (Iollann)
Mac An Lega, Uilliam (Iollann) (d. p.1475), scribe and author-translator of many texts, belonged, as his name suggests, to an hereditary medical family, but Uilliam himself seems to have composed or copied nothing of a medical nature. He has been accurately described as…...
Macan, Turner
Macan, Turner (1792–1836), soldier, linguist and translator, was born on 30 September 1792 at Kilbrogan, Bandon, Co. Cork, the second son of seven children (three sons and four daughters) of Robert Macan (1750–1808), originally of Carrive, Co. Armagh, and his wife Hannah (née…...
Mac Cana, Proinsias
Mac Cana, Proinsias (1926–2004), Celtic scholar, was born 6 July 1926 in Belfast, son of George McCann and his wife Mary Catherine (née Mallon). He grew up in a catholic district in east Belfast, where inter-community tensions were keenly felt. He attended St Malachy's College during…...
MacCarthy, Denis Florence
MacCarthy, Denis Florence (1817–82), Young Irelander, poet, and translator, was born 26 May 1817 at 24 Lower Sackville St., Dublin, the only son of John MacCarthy (d. 1857), a catholic woollen merchant with premises on Eden Quay, Dublin, and Sarah MacCarthy (née Courtney) (d. 1845…...
MacKenna, Stephen
MacKenna, Stephen (1872–1935), journalist and translator of Plotinus, was born 15 January 1872 in Liverpool, second child of Capt. Stephen Joseph MacKenna, a flamboyant and improvident former Irish officer in the Indian army, and Elizabeth MacKenna (née Deane), of mixed Irish and…...
MacMahon, Bernard
MacMahon, Bernard (c.1736–1816), priest, scientist, and translator, was born at Castlering, Co. Louth, one of two brothers. He was educated locally and studied for the secular priesthood at Antwerp, presumably at the Irish College there. His name appears on the 1771 list…...
Madgett, Nicholas
This is a co-subject for the entry on Madgett, Nicholas. View the original entry....
Madgett, Nicholas
Madgett, Nicholas (d. 1813), French official and translator, was born in Co. Kerry, probably in the early 1740s. He went to France (in or before 1760), studied for the catholic priesthood at the Irish College, Toulouse (licence and doctorat, 1764), was ordained…...
Maguire, Thomas
Maguire, Thomas (1831–89), classicist and unionist, was born 24 January 1831 in Dublin, son of Thomas Maguire, a catholic businessman. He had two sisters, Eliza and Mary. Their father became a colonial magistrate in Mauritius, where Thomas junior, after education in Dublin, lived…...
Mahaffy, Sir John Pentland
Mahaffy, Sir John Pentland (1839–1919), classical scholar and provost of TCD, was born at Chapponnaire, near Vevey, Switzerland, on 26 February 1839, youngest of six children of Nathaniel Brindley Mahaffy, Church of Ireland clergyman, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Pentland).…...
Mailduf
Mailduf (d. c.675), teacher and scholar who gave his name to Malmesbury (Maeldufi urbem), is named by William of Malmesbury as the first teacher of Aldhelm (d. 709), the first Anglo-Saxon man of letters. William describes Mailduf as ‘an Irishman by birth, a…...
Manchán
Manchán (d. 665) of Liath Mancháin (Lemanaghan, Co. Offaly), Irish ecclesiastic and scholar, has been given contradictory genealogies, perhaps through confusion with one of the several ecclesiastics named Manchán/ Mainchín. The most reliable source states that his father was Sillán…...
Mangan, James Clarence
Mangan, James Clarence (1803–49), poet and translator, was probably born 1 May 1803 in Dublin, the second of five children of James Mangan (1765–1843) from Shanagolden, Co. Limerick, who may have been a hedge-school teacher, and Catherine (née Smith; 1771–1846), whose family owned…...
Manning, Robert
Manning, Robert (1816–97), surveyor and civil engineer, was born 22 October 1816 in Avincourt, Normandy, France, third of eight children of William Manning (1783–1826) of Knocknamohil, Co. Wicklow, a lieutenant in the Wicklow militia who fought in the USA, in the Peninsular war, and…...
Marconi, Guglielmo
Marconi, Guglielmo (1874–1937), pioneer of wireless telegraphy, was born 25 April 1874 of mixed Irish–Italian parentage: his mother, Annie, from Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, was the only child of Andrew Jameson, of the Jameson family of distillery fame, which had settled in Ireland…...
Marsden, William
Marsden, William (1754–1836), orientalist, numismatist, and secretary to the admiralty, was born 16 November 1754, probably in Verval, Co. Wicklow, youngest child among six sons and four daughters of John Marsden (d. 1801), a wealthy merchant in Dublin, who was one of the founders…...
Marstrander, Carl
Marstrander, Carl (1883–1965), Celtic scholar and linguist, was born 26 November 1883 in Kristiansand, Norway, son of Fredric Marstrander, principal of a local college, and his wife Christiane Brodtkorb Svendrup. His interest in languages was probably encouraged at an early age by a…...
Martin, James
Martin, James (1783–1860), poet, antiquary, and linguist, was born at Millbrook, near Oldcastle, Co. Meath, youngest son among several children of James Martin, small farmer, who owned several cabins and some plots of land in Oldcastle, and who, according to McCall (1896, 631),…...
Martinus (Martin) Hiberniensis
Martinus (Martin) Hiberniensis (‘the Irishman’) (819–75), scribe and master of the cathedral school at Laon, was one of the greatest of Irish Carolingian scholars. What little we know of Martin has been provided by himself in a manuscript of the Annals of Laon (‘Annales Laudunenses…...