Origin of the Name Guerin
The origin of the name
Guerin 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 Guerin
include Geerin, Gearin, Gearan, Gerran, McGivern and Green. This name is usually of native Irish origin with some families of the name being from the Ó'Gearáin sept of 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.
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 modern times the name Guerin is most associated with County Limerick although it exists as Geran and Gerin in County Kerry and as Green in the Athlone area. In Ulster it is an occasional variant of the name McGivern. Some families of the name Guerin may be also of Huguenot origin.
The Guerin 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 Guerin descendants.