>The Brontë family can be traced to the Irish clan Ó Pronntaigh, which literally means "descendant of Pronntach". They were a family of hereditary scribes and literary men in Fermanagh. The version Ó Proinntigh, which was first given by Patrick Woulfe in his Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall (transl. Surnames of the Gael and the Foreigner)[2] and reproduced without question by Edward MacLysaght, cannot be accepted as correct, as there were a number of well-known scribes with this name writing in Irish in the 17th and 18th centuries and all of them used the spelling Ó Pronntaigh. The name is derived from the word pronntach or bronntach,[3] which is related to the word bronnadh, meaning "giving" or "bestowal" (pronn is given as an Ulster version of bronn in O'Reilly's Irish English Dictionary.)[4] Patrick Woulfe, the author of Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall, suggested that it was derived from proinnteach (the refectory of a monastery).[2] Ó Pronntaigh was earlier anglicised as Prunty and sometimes Brunty.

>At some point, Patrick Brontë (born Brunty), the sisters' father, decided on the alternative spelling with the diaeresis over the terminal ⟨e⟩ to indicate that the name has two syllables. Multiple theories exist to account for the change as well, including that he may have wished to hide his humble origins.[5] As a man of letters, he would have been familiar with classical Greek and may have chosen the name after the Greek βροντή (transl. thunder). One view, which biographer C. K. Shorter proposed in 1896, is that he adapted his name to associate himself with Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was also Duke of Bronte.[6] One might also find evidence for this theory in Patrick Brontë's desire to associate himself with the Duke of Wellington in his form of dress.

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