Canning Family Crest, Coat of Arms & Canning Name Origin

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Origin of the Name Canning

The ancient history of the name Canning was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. Variants of Canning include Cannings and O'Cannon. Cannon is a common English surname derived from the ecclesiastical word canon. It was the anglicized form of the name of two quite distinct Irish Septs. Though identical in English these two are different in Irish . One Sept called O'Canain were of the Hy Many or 'Ui Maine' and were of the same stock as the O'Maddens, belonging to Southern County Galway, though nearly extinct there now. The other Sept were called O'Cannannain, abbreviated to O'Canann, an were old Tirconnell Sept whose chiefs the annalists call 'Kings of Cinel Conaill'. The Sept was subjugated by the powerful O'Donnells in the thirteenth century and then sank into obscurity. Descendants of minor families of the Sept however, remained in their ancestral territory. In the seventeenth century they were found in County Donegal where priests called Cannon were numerous. The site of the ancient castle of the O'Cannons was near Letterkenny in County Donegal. The name Kenny is sometimes used in that district as a synonym of Cannon and Canning.