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The o'brien Surname

o'brien Name Meaning and History

Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Briain ‘descendant of Brian’, a personal name probably based on the element bre- ‘hill’, with the transferred sense ‘eminence’, i.e. ‘exalted one’. See also Bryan. In Ireland there has also been some confusion with O’Byrne (see Byrne).

Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
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o'brien Family Facts

Distribution of o'brien Families in the US in 1920
Number of o'brien families
 399-796
 134-398		 1-133
 0
Compiled by Ancestry.com.au from the 1920 US Federal Census records

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Year

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