Sullivan Irish Family Gifts & Heritage

Sullivan is an Irish surname, most often the English form of Ó Súileabháin, from Súil-dubhán, “black-eyed,” as Patrick Woulfe explains it. The same Irish name gives O’Sullivan, and a separate midland name, Ó Súileacháin of Longford, Cavan and Louth, was also anglicized Sullivan.

The Ó Súileabháin family began on the River Suir in Tipperary, with a seat at Knockgraffon near Cahir, before moving to the shores of Kenmare and Bantry Bays around 1192. There they rose to rank among the most powerful families in Munster, dividing into O’Sullivan Mór of Dunkerron, O’Sullivan Beare of Beara and Bantry, and other branches. Domhnall Cam O’Sullivan Beare held out at Dunboy in 1602 and then marched some thousand followers north through the winter to Leitrim. In the eighteenth century the Kerry poet Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin gave the name a lasting place in Irish-language verse. Sullivan ranked as the third most common surname in Ireland in Matheson’s 1890 survey.

The Sullivan range suits home and holiday: a woven blanket, garden flag, accent mug and two Christmas ornament styles on the Irish National Tartan, alongside cork coasters for the table, a novelty plate for the car and a Celtic harp T-shirt. Discover the Cork and Kerry story in our Sullivan surname history.