Flynn & O’Flynn Irish Family Heritage Gifts

Flynn and O’Flynn are the English forms of the Irish Ó Floinn, “descendant of Flann,” an old personal name meaning red or ruddy. Several separate families took the name. In west Roscommon the O’Flynns were chiefs of Síol Maolruain around Kiltullagh and Kilkeevin, and in Tirawley, County Mayo, another family was seated near Crossmolina, with a branch serving as erenaghs of the church at Errew on Lough Conn.

Cork had two lines of its own. The O’Flynns of Ardagh, chiefs of the district later called the barony of Ibane, lived at Ardagh Castle between Skibbereen and Baltimore, while the lords of Muscraidhe Uí Fhloinn held the country between Blarney and Ballyvourney until the MacCarthys displaced them around the start of the fourteenth century. In Antrim the name softened into O’Lynn. Cork also gave us Father James Christopher O’Flynn, founder of the Cork Shakespearean Company, and the name found a wide audience through Liam O’Flynn, the uilleann piper of Planxty.

Both spellings share this collection. Flynn and O’Flynn each come on garden flags, coaster sets, ceramic Christmas ornaments, T-shirts and novelty license plates, while Flynn adds an accent mug and a woven blanket on the Irish National Tartan. Explore the full Flynn and O’Flynn surname history.