Origin of the Name Waldron
The
Waldron 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 Waldron
include Wellesley, Wesley, Colley and Waldrum. This name in Irish is Mac Bhaildrin and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from Connacht.
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.
This family came to Ireland with the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1170 and settled in the West, particularly in Counties Mayo and Roscommon. The variant Wellesley is more prominent in Leinster and is recorded as early as 1243 in the person of a de Welleselegh who was appointed as a Justice Itinerant. Father Walter Wellesley was Bishop of Kildare from 1529 to 1539 and with the failure of the male line in the eighteenth century of this family, their name was passed on to the Colleys of Castle Carbery, County Kildare, to whom they are closely related. In modern times this name is found mostly in its original territory.
The Waldron 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 Waldron descendants.