The distribution of the Bowes surname in Ireland in the Griffith's Valuation and the 1911 Census reveals a significant concentration in Fermanagh. In the north we have a Scottish Protestant Bowes family that settled in Fermanagh in the 1600s in our DNA Project, but Irish surname historian Woulfe indicates there may have been an Irish line from Fermanagh that anglicized its name to Bowes. It' s not certain which, if either, of these may represent the founding Bowes family from Fermanagh. With no record of the second other than one historian's mention of it which he couldn't verify, I suspect the first is it.
Woulfe stated that Bowes was also an anglicization of O'Boathghalach, meaning foolhardy, in some parts of Ulster.
The head of this family is mentioned by O'Dugan as one of the chiefs of Clan Fergus in Ulster. I have failed to discover any early [anglicized] form of the surname, and am by no means certain that it is still extant. There was also a family surnamed O Baotgail or O Baotgaile in the parish of Skreen, Co. Sligo, but that too seems to have disappeared. [1]
Other anglicizations he associates with this Gaelic name are Bohill and Boetius. His failure to discover any "early" anglicized forms must have been a search for something between the old Gaelic and Bowes, Bohill and Boetius, similar to the way Buadhaigh in Cork is said to have become Bogue before Bowe and Bowes, changes that may have arisen from local variations in spelling and pronunciation.
Note, there are no Boetius in the Griffith's Valuation of 1848-64, and only three Bohill (two in Down and one in Antrim). This coincides with the Internet Surname Database's history of Bohills:
This unusual and interesting name is of Scottish origin, and is a locational surname deriving from the place called Bowhill, near Selkirk, in the Borders region, formerly Berwickshire. The placename means 'the hill shaped like a bow', derived from the Old English pre 7th Century 'boga', bow, with 'hyll', hill. Locational surnames were acquired especially by those former inhabitants of a place who had moved to another area, and were thereafter best identified by the name of their birthplace. Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bohills#ixzz13UVyivYB
1. Woulfe, Patrick. Irish Names and Surnames. Genealogical Pub. Co.: Baltimore. 1967, p. 434.