Origin of the Name Galligan
The origin of the name
Galligan 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 Galligan
include Galigan, Gilligan, O'Gillan, Gillan and Gillen. This name in Irish is derived from the Gaelic O'Gealagain sept that was located in County Sligo.
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.
They were of the Ui Fiachrach tribe that was ultimately descended from Fiachra, brother of 'Niall of the Nine Hostages'. When Gaelic names were anglicized during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were often changed to Anglo equivalents that sounded most like their original Gaelic name. In County Cavan the name is also anglicized as White, likely from the translation of the word 'geall' within the name to the word 'white'. In modern times this name and its variants are still mostly found in the northern Counties.
The Galligan 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 Galligan descendants.