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O) CAHALANE, Callan CULHANE
Ó Cathaláin, anglicized Cahalane, was generally shortened to Callan; It would appear that Callan and Cahalene are basically the same: Ó Cathaláin was in some places shortened to Ó Cathláin, from where the form Culhane in English came. The form Cahalane mainly used in Counties Kerry and Cork, but Culhane is almost peculiar to Co. Limerick, which is the original homeland of the Munster sept of Ó Cathaláin: their chiefs appear in O'Heerin's' Topographical Poem, the Four Masters and elsewhere as chiefs of Owney Beg, of which territory they were dispossessed in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century by the O'Mulryans.
Callan is usual in Louth and Monaghan where the Oriel sept of Ó Cathaláin are located. The eponymous ancestoris said to be Cathalan, King of Farney, who was killed in 1028. In Co. Monaghan they are especially foundwe find sixteenth and seventeenth century records such as the Fiants, Monastic Extents, Hearth Money Rolls, Petty's "census" etc. They are sometimes called MacCallan there, but as a rule in other parts of Ulster this, with MacCallion, regarded as the name of the Scottish galloglass family MacCadin which served the O'Donnel~is of Tirconnell. A third distinct sept of 6 Cathal~iin was to be found in what is now Co. Roscommon in early mediaeval times, but the name is rare there today. Father Nicholas Callan (1799-1864), one of the most distinguished professors at was a Louth man, while Fr. Bernard Calan - Brian Ó Cathaláin (1750-1804) - a Gaelic poet and scholar of note, was one of many learned priests of the diocese of Clogher. In the Justiciary Rolls of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, de Callan (i.e. of the town of Callan) occurs as a surname: David de Callan was mayor of Dublin in 1280, like de Cashel, de Clonmel, de Naas, de Kildare etc., must be treated as one of the ephemeral type.