Origin of the Name Mulvany
The
Mulvany 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 Mulvany
include Mulvenna, O'Mulvey and Mulvey. This name in Irish is O'Maoilmheana and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from County Derry.
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.
Before the destruction of the Gaelic order in the seventeenth century the sept was located in O'Cahans Country, County Derry and they were hereditary Ollavs to O'Cahan. The first of the name mentioned in history was O'MaoilMheana in the year 1164, who was fourteenth in descent from Eoghan, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages. The name is associated with the River Meana at Randalstown, now the River Main. The name means 'devotee of the Meana' and by the seventeenth century their homeland had moved to the adjacent County of Antrim, in the Barony of Glenarm. Mulvenna is the usual form in Ulster with Mulvany outside the Province.
The Mulvany 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 Mulvany descendants.