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The Ancient and Distinguished History of the Irish Sept Fallon. The history of the FALLON family reaches back into ancient history (some say over 30 centuries) to the founding peoples of Ireland.Members of the Fallon family are decendants of Ir, a son of King Milesius of spain who was sent with his seven brothers to conquer Ireland.The lines fathered by these brothers are responsible for the parentage of nearly all of the ancient royal houses of Ireland,including that great King Brian Boru,who once turned back the Normans early in the 11th century. In the sparsely populated Ireland,prior to the 11th century,people travelled little,and therefore rarely met others sharing their name.A single personal name was sufficient for each person.After the 11th century though,the country grew populous enough to make it necessary for people to begin to take surnames.While Anglicized versions of Irish names are familiar to most people,the majority of these names,often unknown to their inheritors,have a long and proud Gaelic heritage; The origional Gaelic form of thee name FALLON is O Fallamhain.The ancient Irish tradition of patronymic names has created many distinguished surnames,of which FALLON is a fine example. O and Mc are patronymic prefixes,meaning 'grandson of' and 'son of'. These prefixes were applied to the name of an older male relative to indicate the lineage of the initial bearer, and are indicative of a hereditory surname. Most of the population of Ireland was illiterate during the middle ages and as such, could not specify a spelling for their names.The archives thatsurvive today, demonstrate the difficulty experienced by the scribes of this period in their attempts to record these names in writing. Father changes occured in the 17th century, when the British under Cromwell,attacked and conquered Ireland, but found it very difficult to subjucate the proud Irish people.During this period, the invaders also attacked the Gaelic language and its names. They removed distinct Irish prefixes like 'O' and 'Mc',translated Gaelic names into English and the 'simplified' and 'standardizes' spellings. Even the movement back to the old names, started by the Gaelic league in 1893,could not fully reverse the damage done by this process.Records from that era were sketchy at best; so many of the revised versions of the names used the wrong prefixes or were translated incorrectly. Spelling variations of the name FALLON include;Falon, Faloone, Falan, O'Fallon, O'Falon,Falone, Falloone, Falloon, Falkner,and others. Books by O'Hart, McLysaght,and O'Brien aswell as baptismal records,parish records,ancient land grants and the 'four masters' were used in the investigation of the Fallon family name.The earliest evidence from this search revealed the family in the countries of Galway and Roscommon,where they were a sept of the Ui Maine ruling lands encompassing the modern parishes of Camma and Dysart in the barony of Athelone in Roscommon.A smaller branch of the family held a family seat nearby in the Ballinasloe area and owned estates there until recent times. They claimed to be direct decendants of the 'Cheifs of O'Fallons Country' otherwise known as Clann Udach. The surname can also be found in county Armagh in the form of Falloon.Noteable members of the family include two medievil bishops of Derry and Elphin, and also James O'Fallon (1749-1794),who emigrated from Ireland to participate in the American War of Independance. Rabidly anti-British, he was one of the first Irishmen to revive the prefix which had been dropped from the surname by his ancestors under English pressure, predating the 20th century practice by about one hundred and fifty years. Today, the family name remains in Ireland in the area near the ruins of the Castle of Athlone, in the county Roscommon. Thousands of irish left in their homeland in the 18th and 19th centuries to escape the religious, racial and political discrimination, and lack of economic opportunities experienced at home, as a result of English rule.Many left Ireland in search of a plot of land to call their own. These immigrants arrived at the eastern shores of North America. The early settlers began a long process of breking the land for homesteading; whereas later settlers were employed at building the bridges,canals and railroads essential to the emerging nations of United States and Canada. Many others would toil for lowwages in the dangerous factories of the day. Although there had been a steady migration of Irish to North America over these years, the greatest influx of Irish imigrants came to North AmericA during the great potato famine of the late 1840s.These immigrants often arrived poor, hungry and destitute to large quarentine camps before they could join their new society. Early North American immigration records have revealed a number of people bearing the Irish name Fallon or a variant.Typical was Stephen Fallon who is known to have lived in Pennsylvania in 1773. The 1984 edition of the 'Report of Distribution of surnames in the Social Security Number file' lists the surname Fallon as the 2,697th most popular surname in the United States. For further research try 'George Lawrence Fallon, 1888-1959: his Ancestors and Decendants' by Kathleen Moore Fitzpatrick: Early Origins:-Ir Gaelic Name:- OFallamhain Crest:- A Half Greyhound who am I? well, I am of course a Fallon! my Name is Lynette Fallon (now known as Parr) my father is Peter Fallon and my grandfather is Simon Fallon.My grandfather was catholic,unfortunately he died when I was a teenager(approximately 21 years ago) my father had taken my younger brother Richard and myself to Australia in 1976 but I had a bad time there and left home at 14 yrs old,I made my own way back home to Liverpool when I was 19 yrs old.My grandad had already died by this time so i hadnt seen grandad since I was 13 yrs old.My nanna died not long after my grandad(grandad had heartattack nanna had parkinsons)my nanna was Violet Pearl Her father was the youngest son of the Blundell family (nr southport)her mother was a maid there. my father remarried to a woman called Ann Marie Williams and they have a son Mathew.They live in Australia. I now have 3 children of my own a girl and 2 boys Shannon,Daniel and Joshuah, Shannon has changed her name to Emma Emma now has a son of her own called Dylan. would love to hear from any Fallons out there after all we ARE related arnt we?bye for now, Love Lyn xxxx

What a lovely letter and all that informaition,is amazing, my father came from a large family,his parents came from knock Irland,and came to England in the early 19th century,my father died in 1969 my mother still living and came from malta,hope we are related bye for now
Carmen Scott

Hello Lyn, Was very interested in the history of the Fallons. I too was a Fallon before I got Married. My Fathers, Father come to New Zealand with the rest of his family in the 1800s from Roscommon. They apparently owned a Castle so I am told in Killeglan. It is now in ruins. My Dad is in his eighties now. Pam