Mahon

Mahon has two origins:

Mochin means
descendant of Mochn,
a 'pet' form of an early
name beginning with
'Moch'; and
Machin, which means
descendant of Machn,
the youth. OMahon
became much used for
Mochin as well as
Machin. The name
also appears as
Maughan. Mahon,
Mohan and Maughan
families, particularly in
Connaught, anglicised
their name as Vaughan,
evidently from the
genitive of Mochin,
U Mhochin, which
has the same
pronunciation.
Vaughan, from the
Welsh 'fychan', small,
has been in Ireland
since the sixteenth
century, though few of
the name will be of
Welsh extraction.

Neither Mahon nor Mohan suggests where the name ought to be found. The map shows the
distribution of some 1,220 Mahon families in Ireland in 1992. The name is strongest in
Leinster. This generally means that Greater Dublin appears at a higher than usual density. A
third of Mahons live around the Republic's capital as compared to just over a fifth of all Irish
families. The density in Dublin will reflect the build-up of population there in relatively
modern times. Modern population build-up may also account for the presence of the name in
Belfast, Derry, Cork and Waterford.

Outside Dublin, the density is strongest in the catchment area of the River Slaney, which rises
west of Dublin and enters the sea at Wexford. Most of the remainder of the families live in
the centre of the country from Greater Dublin west to Galway and Sligo.

The name is largely absent from the coastal area south of Dublin and from the Wicklow
mountains. It is absent from much of Munster, much of Ulster, and the west of Connaught.

Northern Ireland has a third of all Irish families. It has only 6% of the Mahons.