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A genealogist gave me the following: McGlinchey or McGlinchy comes from the Irish Mac Loingsigh. In Irish Loinsech means mariner/sailor, therefore MacGlinchey means son of the mariner. The Mac or O denoted descent, mac (son) or ni (daughter) indicating that the surname was formed from the personal name, or sometimes the trade/profession, of the father of the first man to bear the surnames. While O names are derived from a grandfather of even earlier descendant, o or ua being the Irish word for grandson, or more loosely, male descendant. Therefore McGlinchey was the descendant of someone who was a sailor/mariner. In later medieval, early modern times, from the 17th century onwards, there was another important development in Irish surnames. At this time the effects of the English conquest were intensified with the continuous religious persecution, including the introduction of the Penal code (which disallowed Catholics owning land, voting, participating in trade and business and education. As almost all the old Gaelic families like the MacLoingsigh were Catholic, this invariably lead an inferiority complex among the conquered people, i.e. the Old Irish families. This lead to a whole scale discarding of the distinctive O and Mac prefixes to Irish names and indeed to the widespread adoption of English sounding names from Irish ones. For example, using Glinchey instead of McGlinchey. In the late 19th and 20th century many of these families readopted the Mac or O and now it more common to see the name as McGlinchey rather than Glinchey.