The above is the usual spelling of this name: other forms are Rattigan, Ractigan, Ratican, Rattican and Rhatigan. The accepted Irish form is Ó Reachtagáin,-cf. the Gaelic poetess Máire Ní Reachtagáin (d. 1733) but in the Irish charters copied into the Book of Kells (printed in the Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society *) it appears twice as a Mac name-Mac Rechtogain and Mac Rectacan which O'Donovan in his notes thereto says is anglicized Rattigan. These charters are of the 12th century but the probability is that Mac Ratigan had already become a hereditary surname. However by the sixteenth century it was definitely an O name as the Tudor Fiants show. It so appears also in the Four Masters (for A.D. 1488).

This family were coarbs of St. Finnen in the parish of Clooncraff (Co. Roscommon). This lies between Elphin and Athlone. Testing their modern location by birth registrations of the second half of the last century I find it to be an area centred at Clooncraff and spreading into the adjoining counties of Galway, Mayo and Westmeath. It may be of some interest to mention that the number of Ratigan etc. births in 1865 was 26; in 1890 it was 9.

*See also Notitiae as Leabhar Ceannanuis Mair G. MacNiocaill, the appendix of which has a third instance.

Ó Reachtagáin This appears as an O name since the fifteenth century, though in twelfth century charters it is given the prefix Mac. The family were coarbs of St. Finnen in Co. Roscommon. Variants are Ractigan, Rattican, Rhatigan etc. SIF 129; Map Ros