was the name of a group of people living in pre-historic Ireland. The name may be translated as 'men' () of the 'people' (', possibly from ) 'of ' (), the last being the given name of the people or their territory, perhaps from ('horse') and ('death', 'wonderful', or 'across the sea'). T. F. O'Rahilly believed they are connected to, or the same as, the Nagnatae tribe, mentioned in Ptolemy's second-century AD work Geography, but O'Rahilly's model of the early populating of Ireland is not well-accepted by modern scholars.
Virtually all of Ireland west of the Shannon was once named after the and was called until the early historic era ( 5th-7th centuries).
It was only with the rise of the dynasty that the term was dropped and the province was renamed Connacht.