Author:            Edward MacLysaght

Book:               More Irish Families

Published:            Irish Academic Press

Yourell, Uriel

Though this is a rare surname, it is spelt today in several ways –as above, Eurell etc.; and formerly there were also other variants such as Irriel which appears in the Elizabethan Fiants as the name of a Westmeath gentleman, seated at Laghanstown. Several other Fiants of the late sixteenth century also cite persons called Uriell etc., domiciled in Co Westmeath and in the Description of Ireland, written in 1598, Uriell of Balromen is listed among the principal gentlemen of Co Westmeath at that date. They seem to have lost this prominent position by 1659 as they do not appear among the tituladoes of that county in the “census” of that date.

Yourell is one of our few toponymics, being de Oirgialla in Irish i.e. of Oriel. It was in fact in the eastern part of Oriel i.e. Louth that this Norman family first settled after the invasion. As Uriell, Eryell, Yriel etc often with the prefix de, it is frequent in records relating to counties near Dublin from 1263 onwards. I do not know when they became established in Co Westmeath; probably at the beginning of the fifteenth century when James Uriel was chief baron of the Exchequer in Dublin. In 1540, William Urielle was appointed a collector for the barony of Corkaree, Co Westmeath. The Westmeath Book of Survey and Distribution records one Oliver Uriell as a proprietor in 1641 in the parish of Portnashangan in that barony.

Surprisingly it is found as of Galway city in the list of Irishmen outlawed as Jacobites after 1691 in the person of John Erell. In the same document it appears also as a Christian name – Irriel Farrell of Co Roscommon.

Another part of the country remote from its homeland in which it has been found is Co Clare (1655) and Dermot F. Gleeson in his Last Lords of Ormond mentions that Uriel, formerly Iriel, is a surname still to be found in the Ormond country today.