Garvans in Griffith Valuation of Ireland
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Garvans in Griffith Valuation of Ireland

According to the historical account, two branches of the Garvey family (the Meath O'Gairbhin branch and the Kerry O'Garbhain branch) originally anglicized their names to Garvin and Garvan. It claims that the name of the Meath branch, Garvin, was "corrupted" to Garvey after the group moved to Connacht.

It's interesting to take a look at where these names occurred in Ireland in the mid-1800s as shown in the Griffith Valuation.

Since Garvan and Garvin are said to be earlier versions of the name Garvey, we would expect to find those names in the same areas where the name Garvey occurred. Comparing the Garvey surname map with the one shown above we see that there is a similiarity between the two maps is in that there is a general grouping of the names in the northeast of Ireland and the west coast of Ireland. Counties Mayo and Armagh contain large numbers of both Garveys and Garvan/Garvins. There are 146 Garvan/Garvin/Garvens shown in the Griffith Valuation - roughly one third the number of Garveys.

The name Garvan/Garvin differs in having a large percentage of the people with those names in Counties Tipperary, Cork and Londonderry. There were very few Garveys in any of those counties. I don't know what - if any - the story behind that may be.

Another note of interest: In the counties in which the name Garvan/Garvin was most common, the name Garvan usually occurred at least twice as often as the name Garvin. However Counties Tipperary and Cork are the only two places that the two names were equally common. Once again, I can only guess what - if any - the meaning of that might be. The name Garvin was the original Anglised name of the branch of Garveys (O'Gairbhin) that fled County Meath during the Norman Invasion of Ireland in the early 1200's. Might it mean that this area (Tipperary/Cork) was a place in which that group settled?

The name Garven was sometimes given- but occurred much less frequently than either Garvan or Garvin.


The maps below show by county the locations of the civil parishes in which the Griffith Valuation reported a Garvan to be holding land.

Tipperary
Cork
Derry
Antrim
Armagh
Mayo



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