Ciarán

Ciarán comes from the Old Irish Cíarán. It began as a byname made from ciar, dark or black, with the small ending -án, so it means something like “little dark one”. Ciara is the feminine counterpart, and Kieran and Kieron are English spellings of the same name.

Two early saints made it popular. Ciarán of Saighir, known as Ciarán the Elder, lived in the 5th century. Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, founded his monastery on the Shannon in 544 but died of plague within months, still in his early thirties. A legend says the hide of his dun cow was later used to make the Book of the Dun Cow, one of the oldest collections of Irish literature.

With all spellings counted together, Ciarán was a top-30 boys’ name for much of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The most babies came in 1982, with 359 boys, and its best rank was number 23 in 2000. The CSO recorded no fadas before 2018. Since then most parents have used one: in 2025 there were 35 boys named Ciarán and 10 named Ciaran. In Northern Ireland it reached number 26 in 1998.