Origin of the Name Phair
The origin of the name
Phair was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. The names Fair and Phair are personal surnames of old, said to be derived from the adjective 'fair' meaning 'blond' or 'handsome'. These names are often of Scottish descent and are found in many ancient manuscripts in that country. Examples of such are an Andro Fair of the Bradhirst, blaze deput to John of Craufurd and Thomas Fare who witnessed an instrument of 1446. Names were recorded in these ancient documents to make it easier for their overlords to collect taxes and to keep records of the population at any given time. When the overlords acquired lands by either force or gifts from their rulers, they created charters of ownership for themselves and their vassals.
In Ireland this name and its variants were introduced into Ulster Province by settlers who arrived from England and Scotland , especially during the seventeenth century. It was the 'Plantations of Ireland ' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that marked the end of Gaelic supremacy in Ireland . While the influx of settlers in the wake of the earlier Anglo-Norman invasion of the twelfth century resulted in a full integration into Irish society of the new arrivals, the same never occurred with the Ulster Planters who maintained their own distinct identity.
The names Fair and Phair are also anglicized forms of the Gaelic word 'fionn', meaning 'fair'.
The Phair 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 Phair descendants.