Where the Murray name comes from

Murray is both a Scottish and an Irish surname, and the two come from unrelated roots. The Scottish name comes from Moray, the district on the south shore of the Moray Firth, whose Medieval Gaelic form Muireb was Latinised as Moravia because the b there was sounded as a v. That place name goes back further still, to the Proto-Celtic words mori, meaning sea, and treba, meaning settlement. The Irish name runs on its own line, from O Muireadhaigh and Mac Muireadhaigh, descendant of Muireadhach, or from Mac Giolla Mhuire, servant of the Virgin Mary.

Bearers of the Scottish name trace their heritage to the 12th century province of Moray, once a local kingdom, and to Freskin, one of the Flemish lords who crossed the North Sea and settled in Scotland. The senior line took the name Sutherland and were Earls of Sutherland by 1235, while the chiefs held Petty in Moray and Bothwell in Clydesdale before 1253. The Murray spelling never applied to the land itself, which stayed Moray, but it became the commonest form of the surname, especially among Scottish emigrants.