Sloan Coat of Arms, Family Crest and Sloan Family History

Sloan Family History

The Sloan ancient family history was found in the irishsurnames.com archives.

Many different spelling variations of the same name can be traced back to a single original root. Also, when a bearer of a name emigrated from Ireland it was not uncommon that their original name would be incorrectly transcribed in the record books upon arrival at their new location. Some names have dozens of spelling variations. Some Surnames were also altered over the years based on how they sounded phonetically, by their sound, and depending on the prevailing political conditions it may have been advantageous to change a name from one language to another. This was especially so in Ireland where most Gaelic names were 'anglicized' at some stage.

Variants of the name Sloan include Sloane, Sloyan and Sloyne. This name in Irish is O'Sluaghain and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from Ulster.

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.

We find references to the name from the year 1200 and by the seventeenth century it was one of the most numerous names in the Barony of Newry. In that century Alexander Sloane is returned as a Titulado in the Barony of Kinelarty and Sir Hans Sloane, 1660-1753, was born there. He was of Scottish descent but many centuries before this his family migrated from Ireland to Scotland and then back to Ulster. By the seventeenth century the name had spread to Armagh and in modern times to Belfast and Dublin City.The Sloan 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 Sloan descendants.