Fagan
An Irish surname most often taken from Gaelic Ó Faodhagáin / Ó Faogáin forms, though some older writers also tried to connect it with O'Hagan.
The #2,063 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 17,642 Americans shares it.
Etymology
The surname Fagan is chiefly treated as an Irish name, with older Gaelic forms written in several ways, including Ó Faodhagáin and related spellings. In Irish surname scholarship, it is usually explained as a patronymic from a personal name based on a Gaelic root, though the exact older form is not always set out consistently in 19th-century sources. Some English-language works also proposed a different explanation, saying Fagan could be a corruption of O'Hagan; that view appears in older literature but is not the only possible origin.
History
The name is found in Ireland in several spellings, including Fagan and Fagin, and appears in Irish genealogical and county records. In older English and Irish surname books, the family of Fagan of Feltrim, County Cork, is linked with tradition from an ancestor called Patrick O'Hagan, which shows how the name was sometimes interpreted in historical pedigree writing. The surname also spread into Britain and North America through Irish migration, which helps explain its modern distribution.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The name shows up in both Irish pedigree traditions and in English surname dictionaries, which is one reason its etymology has been debated for more than a century.
From the historical record
“FAED. Gael, faidh, a prophet ? FAGAN. A corruption of the patrony- mical O'Hagan. The Fagans of Feltrim, CO. Cork, deduce themselves from Patrick 0"Hagan, who opposed the invasion of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans in the XII. cent. SeeB.L.G. FAGG. Feg occurs in Domesday, and Fag in the H.R. The Kentish family were…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom