It’s still Murphy’s Law for top Irish surnames

The Central Statistics Office has compiled, for the first time this year, a list of Ireland’s most popular surnames.

And results showed that Murphy was still the most common surname — a trend that remains unchanged for more than 100 years. Another quintessentially Irish surname, Kelly, comes a close second followed by Byrne and Ryan.

The top 10 was compiled using the surnames of babies registered in 2014. It shows 767 babies with the surname Murphy, followed by Kelly (633); Byrne (552); Ryan (527) and O’Brien (489).