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ArchivesRe: meaning of my surname
in reply to a message by karen
If you click around at ancestry.com, you find:
Scottish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Faoláin ‘son of the servant of (Saint) Faolán’ (see Whelan).
And if you look up Whelan, you find that it means 'wolf'. Servant of the wolf. It's a good one!
Scottish: reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Faoláin ‘son of the servant of (Saint) Faolán’ (see Whelan).
And if you look up Whelan, you find that it means 'wolf'. Servant of the wolf. It's a good one!
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Technically to say it means 'servant of the wolf' is a bit of an over simplification. It means servant of St Faolán, the fact that Faolán means wolf is irrelevant. You find Gille paired with lots of saints names in Scotland like Gilmore (servant of Mary)
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