Origin of the Name Dungan
The ancient history of the name
Dungan 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 Dungan
include Dunegan and Donnegan. This name in Irish is O'Donnagain and they had four septs in Ireland .
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.
One of these was a powerful sept of Muscraidhe Tri Maighe, alias O'Donegan's country, where lies the Baronies of Orrery and Duhallow. In the thirteenth century their lands came into the possession of the Norman Barrys. The South West Cork sept became a branch of O'Sullivan Beare while the sept of Ara, in North Tipperary, was dispersed by the O'Briens. Another sept were from Sligo and they were a branch of the Westmeath sept. Those of Ulster are on record from early times with the record of the death of Donnchadh O'Donnagain, King of Fernmhagh, now Monaghan, in the year 1029. Dunegan Castle is near Athlone.
The Dungan 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 Dungan descendants.