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Translations edit
I always thought that "Black Head" was the translation and "White Head" had been a mistranslation? Jimjom (talk) 18:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I am a decendent of them Canavans of County Mayo and my poor old Irish grandmother (a Philbin) always said Canavan meant Black Headed. --71.246.30.208 (talk) 18:26, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
The "áin" at the end of the Irish surname derives from the old Norse, in particular Danish, and translates more accurately as Stranger giving a meaning of Dark / black headed stranger. It has been suggested that the use of the "áin" within the surname implies the family name came into existance post Viking settlements and might imply Scandinavian origins.
The original spelling of the name is Ó’Ceanndubháin. A newer Gaelic spelling of the name was developed in the ‘80’s and this was given as Ó’Ceannabháin.
ceanna-bhan is the Gaelic for Bog Cotton a small white tufted plant found, as the name implies, typically in bogs. It literally means white head and thus the erroneous translation of the surname to encompass the Whiteheads. Whitehead would have been an Anglo-Saxon name established during the plantations. There is no significant present of Whiteheads in the Galway region and given that the Canavans were the physicians to the O’Flaherty clan, this Whitehead connection is even more remote. fergal@indigo.ie - Fergal Canavan
Gaelic forms need cleanup edit
Ó Ceanndubháin and Uí Ceanndubháin are two inflectional forms of *the same* surname, "descendant (literally "grandson") of Ceanndubhán", where Ceanndubhán is built from ceann (head) + dubh (black) + -án (-ling, -ock, -let). This would be "Blackhead", I guess. As for "Whitehead", it probably should be something along the lines of *Ceannbhán, bán meaning "white". 89.64.82.62 (talk) 17:39, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
Ceann = head. How they came up with the opposite meaning by mis-separating dubhain (dubh = black) into du-bhain, with a meaningless du + bhain (white) is wacky. See MacLysaght, Surnames of Ireland, page 35. It should not be the first translation listed, as it is wrong. Galliv (talk) 01:12, 26 January 2023 (UTC)