Origin of the Name Kelleher
The
Kelleher family history 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 Kelleher
include O'Kelleher and Kelliher. The Gaelic sept from which these names originate were of Dalcassian origin.
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.
Their name in Irish is O'Ceileachair taken from words that translate as 'companion dear'. The leader of the sept was a nephew of the famous Brian Boru. They were originally located in County Clare in the fourteenth century but later migrated to Counties Kerry and Cork . In the 1921 census there were 165 families of Kelleher in County Cork . The name is sometimes abbreviated to Keller which is more usually of German origin.
The Kelleher 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 Kelleher descendants.