Family name origins & meanings
- Scottish : Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Bheathain ‘son of the servant of (Saint) Beathan’, a personal name representing a diminutive of beatha ‘life’.
- Irish : Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Giolla Bháin ‘son of the white-haired (i.e. ‘ash blond’) lad’. In Ulster this surname can be the Scottish name as in 1.