*** COLEMAN name meaning ***

The Dictionary of Irish Family Names by Ida Grehan, 1997, Roberts Rinehart Pubs, Dublin, Ireland, pp 56-57:

COLEMAN:

Irish Variants: Colmáin; Clumháin

Anglicized Variants: Clifford; Colman

The history of this name is a complex one. Like so many other names in Ireland, it is also numerous in England. However, it is thought that the name COLEMAN was originally Colmáin of the Uí Fiachrach, a leading sept in the counties of mayo, Sligo and Galway, where many of the name are still to be found.

A branch moved to Cork, where they were known as Clumháin. Some anglicized their name to Clifford. Both the Colemans and the Cliffords are very numerous in Munster.

"Colm" is the Irish word for dove and their name derives from this mystical bird. It would seem they can boast very early ancestry, possibly claiming kinship with the seventh-century Saint COLMAN (c. 605-76), who was Bishop of Lindisfarne in Scotland in 661. An Irish monk, he was at Iona in 664 when he was called to the Synod of Whitby to settle the dispute between the Romans and the Celts over the dating of Easter. Saint Colman supported the Celts, and lost. With his Columban monks, he retreated to Ireland to settle on Inishbofin in the Aran Islands off Galway, where he built a church and a monastery.

There were two earlier COLMAN saints. One was a pagan who became a Christian saint and died about AD 600. The other was Saint COLMAN ELA (b. c. 552), who was a poet before taking holy orders. He was a kinsman of the great St. COLUMBANUS, who was of a royal Donegal family. Saint COLMAN ELA built a monastery on Iona, from where he spread the Gospel to the Scots.

At some time in the ninth century, there was a poet priest called COLMAN who spent most of his life in a monastery in northern France.

Many COLEMANs, COLMANs and CLIFFORDs are in the records of those who forfeited their lands or who served in the armies, both Irish and English, in the seventeenth century.

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The Register of Maryland's Heraldic Families, Vol. 1, p. 123, quotes "Patronymica Britannica"

. . . concerning the COLEMAN name: " . . . an ancient Anglo-Saxon personal name, mentioned by Bode, COLEMAN and COLEMANNUS in Domesday. Probably derived from the occupation of charcoal burning and synonymous with COLLIER."

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