Hi!
I lived in Northern Ireland for a little over a year, and bought a book
called"Irish Family Histories" byIda Grehan.
O Callaghan O ceallachain (the Irish version), Kealachan, Kelaghan
In direct line from Ceallachan, King of Munster from AD 935 until his death
in 954, comes the widespread family of O Callaghan. Ceallachan was also
Chief of the Eoghanact tribe which included the most powerful families in
Munster, including the MacCarthys. Cellachan became a fold hero and is the
ancestor of many of the families which are still in the County Cork area.
Even further back than Ceallachan's time, there is a manuscript in Dublin's
Genealogical Office showing the tree of posterity of Milo, c. 1400 BC, which
includes the progenitors of the O Callaghans and continues up to AD 1614 !
There is also a manuscript that records a pedigree of the O Callaghan chiefs
and their vast territories, from AD 900 up to 1933. They were settled in
County Cork until about 1670 when as with so many Gaelic families, they were
driven to Connacht.
She said that genalogist believe that the name is derived from the word
strife.
There is quite a bit more, you can get it through library loan I would
think.
on 7/7/02 6:47 PM, Cintoosh(a)aol.com at Cintoosh(a)aol.com wrote:
FYI:
I have been doing a lot of research on my "Callaghan" roots and found that
there are many variations on the name. My maiden name, for example, was
"Calahan." I have been able to go back to my gg-grandfather, Peter
Callaghan, and found that he was illiterate. He arrived in the US around
1845 from Ireland, and his name was spelled however the literate person
(court recorder, census taker, etc.) wrote it. Eventually, his children
settled on the spelling with one "L".
Some of the variations I ran across were: Callaghan, Callahan, Calahan,
Callihan, Calihan, Callighan, Calaghan. When I discovered that spelling was
not important, it made my searches much easier!
Cindy Calahan Keim
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