Origin of the Name Gavin
The ancient history of the name
Gavin was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives.
Over the centuries Surnames developed a wide number of variants. Different spellings of the same name can be traced back to an original root. Additionally when a bearer of a name emigrated it was not uncommon that their original name would be incorrectly transcribed in the record books at their new location. Surnames were also often altered over the years based on how they sounded phonetically and depending on the prevailing political conditions it may have been advantageous to change a name from one language to another.
Variants of the name Gavin
include Gavan, Gaven and Gavhin. This name in Irish is O'Gabhain and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from County Cork .
A sept or clan is a collective term describing a group of persons whose immediate ancestors bore a common surname and inhabited the same territory. Irish septs and clans that are related often belong to even larger groups, sometimes called tribes.
These families were a branch of the Corca Laoidhe located in southwest Cork who later spread to the other Munster Counties. In 1584 a Gavin of Ballynerine, County Limerick , was recorded as being 'in rebellion'. Eleven families of the name Gavan are recorded in the County Tipperary Hearth Money Rolls in the year 1665. In statistics of birth registrations in 1890 there were 66 births of the name in Ireland with 42 of these in Counties Mayo and Galway . In modern times the name is mostly found in the western Counties.
The Gavin coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all Gavin descendants.