Corcoran Coat of Arms, Family Crest and Corcoran Family History

Corcoran Family History

The family history of the ancient name Corcoran was found in the irishsurnames.com archives. The name Corcoran is derived from the Gaelic MacCorcrain and O'Corcrain septs that both take their name from the Gaelic word 'corcair', meaning 'purple'. When Gaelic names were anglicized during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were often changed to Anglo equivalents that sounded most like their original Gaelic name. These septs were located in Counties Offaly and Fermanagh respectively.

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. It is also the case that many Irish septs or clans that are related often belong to a larger groups, sometimes called tribes. For example the 'Tribes of Galway' consisted of fourteen distinct families. The 'Tribes of Kilkenny' were ten families, etc.

The O'Corcorans were an ecclesiastical family located near Lough Erne in Ulster. They produced a number of ecclesiastics of note from the eleventh to the fifteenth century including the Bishop of Clogher in the year 1373. A notable bearer of the name was Brigadier General Michael Corcoran, 1827-1863, who was an Irish-American General in the Union Army during the American Civil War and was a close confidant of President Abraham Lincoln. In modern times the name Corcoran is still well represented in Offaly as well as Counties Tipperary and Cork but less so in Ulster. The Corcoran family crest (or coat of arms) came into existence many centuries ago. The process of creating these coats of arms began as early as the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this, including Ireland. The new more formalized art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own family crest, coat of arms, including Corcoran descendants.