Murphy’s, Kelly’s, O’Malley’s: Why so many Irish pubs have the same names

The majority of U.S. Irish pubs include a first or last name — Murphy’s Pub, Kelly’s Tavern or Molly’s Pub & Carryout, for example. The remaining 43 percent of pubs that lacked a first or last name are a bit of an amalgamation. References include:

• Irish landmarks (Blarney Stone Pub, The Killarney, Stephen’s Green)
• Irish words or objects (The Harp Irish Pub, 3 Kilts Tavern, Paddy Wagon Irish Pub)
• Stereotypical names (Shenanigans Pub, The Shamrock, The Crazy Leprechaun Bar & Grill)

A smaller minority also referenced:

• Gaelic words (Fadó, An Seanachi Irish Pub)
• Irish history and folklore (Boudicca’s Celtic Pub, Napper Tandy’s)

But people’s names are far and away the defining characteristic of the U.S. Irish pub name, with two of the most popular — Murphy and Paddy, short for Patrick — topping the list.

The origin of the Irish pub name

The tradition of Irish pubs including surnames can be traced back to, well, Ireland. An 1872 law required all pubs to display the owner’s name above the door, said Elizabeth Stack, the executive director of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City, to regulate alcohol sellers and make it easier to collect taxes while Ireland was under British control.

To this day, more than a quarter of Ireland’s pubs include a first or last name. And it turns out these names aren’t that different from the ones that show up in America, based on data from the Irish government.

Many of these pubs in Ireland have been passed down through generations. In fact, about 1 in 6 pubs in Ireland are owned or operated by someone whose name is on the pub.

Irish pubs are also historically community hubs — places to chat, network and run errands. Many publicans in 19th-century Ireland doubled as grocers or even undertakers. “Drink is almost incidental,” said Stack. “When you go to the bar, it’s to meet up with people.”

Starting the 1840s during the Great Hunger, an influx of Irish immigrants arrived in port cities such as New York and Boston. Irish pubs multiplied, and they quickly assumed a similar role as a neighborhood hub.

Pubs became centers of political discussion and sometimes places to vote in elections. “That role became very important when they moved to America,” Stack said.

‘Paddywhackery’

But at some point in the last couple of centuries, the perception of American Irish pubs shifted from a place of community to a rowdy place to get wasted.

Stereotypes suggesting Irish people are prone to alcoholism have a long history, used to justify British rule over Ireland and to fuel anti-immigration sentiments in 19th-century America. While St. Patrick’s Day is now marketed as a big drinking holiday, pubs in Ireland would close on March 17 as recently as the 1970s, Stack said, as it was a “holy day of obligation.”

“To see [pubs] known all across America essentially just as a place where you go and do shots and get drunk or whatever, that really bothers me,” said Jack McGarry, co-founder of the Dead Rabbit in New York.

McGarry, who was born in Ireland, is frustrated by the stereotypical and inauthentic nature of many American Irish pubs — a phenomenon he refers to as “paddywhackery.” “The leprechauns and the ‘top of the morning to you,’ ‘The Quiet Man’ … this is not our culture.”

Such paddywhackery may include pub owners selecting less “authentic” names, perhaps referencing shamrocks, leprechauns or shenanigans. While these might signal Irishness to an American audience, they don’t signal quality, McGarry said.

Partly to combat these stereotypes — and partly to sell more beer — a cohort of employees working at Guinness in the ’90s came up with the Irish pub concept, an effort to foster the growth of Irish pubs internationally by providing an informational website and other resources.

“We took note of the fact that we were selling a lot of Guinness in those pubs,” said Donal Ballance, who worked at Guinness when the Irish pub concept was founded. “One of our group came up with this brilliant idea that we would form an advisory council of marketers, Irish pub designers, contractors and so on to see if we could actually help investors who wanted to open Irish pub abroad.” In the decades since, he’s helped open more than 120 Irish pubs in North America as an independent business consultant.

An adjacent venture called the Irish Pub Company takes it a step further, sending building materials and interior decor from Ireland across the globe and making it easier than ever to open up a new “Murphy’s.” You pick from six pub styles and essentially have an Irish pub shipped to your door. But McGarry argues these templated efforts to import Irish wood paneling and lighting don’t go far if pub owners lack a commitment to authenticity in other areas: food, drink, and of course, name.

Darren Fagan agrees, and considers it part of his job as a senior project manager at the Irish Pub Company to help his clients select a name and a backstory. “Irish pubs are not just about aesthetics, they’re about the soul,” Fagan said.

McGarry’s pub, the Dead Rabbit, is named after a 19th-century Irish American gang that frequented the New York neighborhood where the pub now stands.

“The group was associated with a lot of nefarious activities and crime and that type of stuff,” McGarry said. “But when you pull back the layers, they were principally created to protect and advance Irish immigrants. And that’s really the focus of the story that we try to tell today: We protect and advance the contemporary Irish story.”

Fagan said when a pub’s name is meaningful, it can contribute to a pub’s success. When a pub leans on a stereotypical or silly name, it might be less likely to succeed — like with one client he worked with in the past.

“It was called the Loafing Leprechaun, and I could not convince him to change the name,” Fagan said. “I just shook my head and thought, ‘Oh, my God, what’s happening here?’ He lasted about three years.”

About this story

Yelp provided a data set of all restaurants in its database tagged by business owners or Yelp users as Irish pubs that were open and active as of July 2023. We found data for pubs in Ireland from the Irish government’s records of active liquor licenses in 2023, specifically those with a publican’s license. When analyzing specific surnames, we combined those with slight spelling variations, such as O’Brien and O’Bryan, O’Neill and O’Neil, or Kelly and Kelley, into one category.

Illustrations by Elizabeth von Oehson. Copy-editing by Sue Doyle, whose surname is the 8th most common included in pub names in Ireland. Reporting and graphics by Carson TerBush, whose family names include O’Brien and Sullivan, both of which made the Top 20.