Origin of the Name Fanning
The origin of the name
Fanning 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 Fanning
include Finan, Finane and Fannery. This name in Irish is O'Fionnain and the latter variants are anglicized forms of this. This sept came from County Mayo.
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 sept was of the Ui Fiachrach Muaighe and they were Chiefs of Coolcarney in County Mayo. By the seventeenth century they had branched out to Roscommon and Sligo and in the 1659 Census they are called Finane and Finan. A most noteable person of the Hy Fiachrach sept was Dr. Francis Joseph O'Finan O.S.D., Bishop of Killala in the year 1847. The oldest record of the name was that of Saint Finan and this goes back to the year 661. The name is derived from a very old Gaelic word that translates as 'Fair'.
The Fanning 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 Fanning descendants.