Origin of the Name Riordan
The ancient history of the name
Riordan 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 Riordan
include Rearden and O'Riordan. The sept of O'Riordan originated in County Tipperary in Munster Province, but they migrated Southwards to County Cork at such an early date that they can be regarded as belonging to that County, where they are now far more numerous than anywhere else in the entire country. The prefix 'O' is frequently used in English, having been very widely resumed in the twentieth century. In the early 1900s there were sixteen Riordans for every one O'Riordan, now the numbers are approximately equal. Several County Cork O'Riordans appear as Irish soldiers in the seventeenth century. A branch of the O'Riordans, long seated at Derryroe in County Cork , settled at Nantes in 1753 and later became Peers of France . O'Rearden is another variant of this name.
The Riordan 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 Riordan descendants.