This is also spelt MacLernon, MacLornan and occasionally MacClarnon. Apart from Dublin, which is comprised of course of families from all the provinces, this name and its variants are rarely found outside Ulster, where it is now-numerous. Many Ulster MacLarnons come, no doubt, originally from Scotland, but quite a number also are of indigenous Irish stock, for the sept of Mac Giolla Earnáin was well established in Iveagh (Co. Down) in the twelfth century. They remained in Ulster, if not in County Down; several appear in the Ulster inquisitions as lessees and tenants e.g. Hugh MacLerenan (Co. Down 1616) and Hugh MacLyrenan (Antrim 1633). In 1699 Paul and Hugh MacLorrinen, of two different places in Co. Antrim, who had been outlawed as Jacobites, claimed under the articles of Limerick and Galway. In the eighteenth century a similar variant of the name was usual, as evidenced by testamentary records in which MacLornan occurs frequently, but not the other modern forms — these testators are all of Ulster (or Dublin). One of them, Daniel MacLorinon alias MacLorinan, of Tullyboy, Co. Derry, left a small sum of money to be divided equally between his parish priest and the local Protestant clergyman — surely an unusual bequest in 1745.

Mac Giolla Earnáin The name of a sept of Iveagh, Co. Down. It is also a Scottish name. Variants are MacLernon, MacLornan and MacClarnon. SIF 103