Cullen

Language & meaning

Meaning & Irish forms

Gaelic, with Scottish and English Mostly Gaelic Irish, from several unrelated families named Ó Cuilinn, Mac Cuilinn, Ó Cuileáin and Ó Cuileamhain, with a separate Cullen surname in Scotland and England.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

The name is built on the personal name Cuileann and Cuileán, usually explained as “Cuileann, 'holly'; Cuileán, 'whelp' or 'young hound'”. Two different personal names lie behind Cullen. Woulfe glosses Cuileann as holly and Cuileán as whelp; Wikipedia describes Cuileán as a wolfhound whelp and notes that some read it as 'the handsome one'.^[1][3][5]

Place

Where the Cullens lived

How common the name was in each county, as a share of the population, in the three surviving full censuses of Ireland. Use the buttons to compare years.

Origins

Septs & territories

Many Irish surnames were adopted independently by unrelated families. These are the distinct Cullen lineages described in the sources.

A surname can point you towards a place. On its own, it cannot establish a pedigree.

The name over time

History

Holly or hound

Cullen is one of those English surnames that hide several Irish ones. The forms Ó Cuilinn and Mac Cuilinn come from Cuileann, 'holly', and Gaois now gives Ó Cuilinn as the standard Irish equivalent of Cullen. Wikipedia instead derives the name from Ó Cuileáin, 'descendant of Cuileán', a word for a whelp or young hound. Woulfe adds Ó Cuileamhain in south Leinster and the northern Mac Coilín, whose English forms also include Cullen. Which one applies depends on where a family comes from.^{[1][2][6][5][4][8]}

The Ó Cuileáin families

Woulfe treats Ó Cuileáin as a variant of Ó Coileáin, the name usually anglicised Collins, and finds separate families of it in Galway, Tyrone, Tipperary and Cork, and perhaps Clare and Sligo. The Galway line was a branch of the Uí Maine. In Tyrone the family were erenaghs of Clogher, responsible for the church lands there. The Cork family belonged to Corca Laoighdhe and were distinct from the Collins family of Uí Conaill Gabhra who arrived in west Cork after 1178. Many of these families now write their name Cullen, Cullane or Collins.^{[3][11][5][9]}

Cullen and Collins

The overlap with Collins is real. Woulfe gives Collins among the English forms of Ó Cuileáin and of the northern Mac Coilín, while Ó Coileáin, from the same root meaning whelp, is the main Collins name of Munster. Wikipedia mentions a claim by the historian C. Thomas Cairney that the O'Cullanes were a chiefly family of the Uí Fidgenti of Limerick, the same people Woulfe connects with Ó Coileáin. A Cork or Limerick Cullen may therefore share an origin with local Collinses.^{[3][8][11][5][14]}

Northern and Leinster Cullens

In the north, Woulfe places Mac Cuilinn in Monaghan and Louth, and records Mac Coilín, a variant of Mac Cailín, as very common in Tyrconnell, Down and Antrim at the end of the 16th century. Mac Cailín was associated with fighting men brought from Scotland by the O'Donnells in the 15th century. In Leinster, Burke records an O'Cullen family at Ballydonoghragh in Co. Wicklow in 1622, and Woulfe's south Leinster Ó Cuileamhain is the family to which O'Curry assigned Cardinal Cullen.^{[2][8][15][12][4]}

Cardinal Paul Cullen

The most influential Cullen in Irish history was Paul Cullen (1803–1878), Archbishop of Armagh and then of Dublin, and the first Irish cardinal. His ultramontane outlook drove the Romanisation of Irish Catholicism and the so-called Devotional Revolution of the later 19th century. A trained biblical scholar, he also drafted the formula for papal infallibility adopted at the First Vatican Council. Woulfe, writing in 1923, notes O'Curry's view that the cardinal came of the Ó Cuileamhain family of south Leinster.^[16][4]

Places linked to the name

• Clogher (Clochar), Co. Tyrone — Where the Ó Cuileáin family were erenaghs of the church lands.^[3][5]
• Ballydonoghragh, Co. Wicklow — Home of the O'Cullen family recorded in a 1622 funeral entry in Ulster's Office.^[12]

Everyday lives

The Cullens in the census

Who the Cullens were in the 1901 and 1911 censuses (and 1926 where recorded), set against everyone in Ireland in the same census.

Cullens All of Ireland Ireland's figure marked on the Cullen bar

Given names

First names among the Cullens

All three censuses combined. Top five in 1926: John, Patrick, James, Thomas, Michael; Mary, Margaret, Bridget, Annie, Elizabeth.

Spellings

Spellings

This page combines the spellings below, which census enumerators and families used for the same name.

Related forms

• MacCullen, MacQuillen — From Mac Cuilinn of Monaghan and Louth.^[2]
• Cullane, Cullan, O'Cullane — From Ó Cuileáin, chiefly in Munster.^[3]
• Cullin — From Ó Cuilín of south Cork and from Mac Coilín.^[7][8]
• Quillen, Quillan — Forms of Ó Cuilinn, Mac Cuilinn and Ó Cuileáin closer to the Irish pronunciation.^[1][2][3]
• Holly — A translation of Mac Cuilinn, from cuileann, 'holly'.^[2]
• Collins — Woulfe lists Collins among the English forms of Ó Cuileáin and Mac Coilín.^[3][8]
• O'Cullen — The form used for the sept and the Wicklow family in Burke's General Armory.^[12]

Diaspora

The Cullens abroad

Emigration carried the name worldwide. In the 2010 United States census:

Source: US Census Bureau, 2010 surname file (public domain).

Heraldry

Is there a Cullen coat of arms?

People

Notable people named Cullen

• William Cullen (1710–1790)
  Scottish physician and chemist, a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment and physician to David Hume.
• Paul Cullen (1803–1878)
  Archbishop of Armagh and then Dublin, and the first Irish cardinal.
• Edgar M. Cullen (1843–1922)
  Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals from 1904 to 1913.
• Michael J. Cullen (1884–1936)
  American entrepreneur who founded King Kullen, regarded as the first supermarket in America.
• Countee Cullen (1903–1946)
  American poet, novelist and playwright of the Harlem Renaissance.
• Bill Cullen (1920–1990)
  American radio and television personality who hosted 23 game shows.
• Peter Cullen (1941–2026)
  Canadian voice actor, the voice of Optimus Prime in the Transformers series.
• Bill Cullen (born 1942)
  Irish businessman and broadcaster, former owner of the Renault Ireland franchise.
• Paddy Cullen (1944–2025)
  Dublin Gaelic footballer at senior level from 1966 to 1979, later a manager.
• Martin Cullen (born 1954)
  Fianna Fáil TD for Waterford who held the transport, environment and arts portfolios.
• Christian Cullen (born 1976)
  New Zealand All Blacks full-back who later played for Munster.
• Leo Cullen (born 1978)
  Leinster and Ireland lock who became Leinster's head coach in 2015.

Questions

Questions about the Cullen name

Evidence

Sources

1. Patrick Woulfe, Ó Cuilinn, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
2. Patrick Woulfe, Mac Cuilinn, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
3. Patrick Woulfe, Ó Cuileáin, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
4. Patrick Woulfe, Ó Cuileamhain, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
5. Wikipedia, Cullen (surname) (2026)
6. Gaois research group, Dublin City University, Sloinnte (surname database), version 2 (2022). Cluster 'Cuileann': Ó Cuilinn = Cullen.
7. Patrick Woulfe, Ó Cuilín, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
8. Patrick Woulfe, Mac Coilín, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
9. Wikipedia, Erenagh (2026)
10. Wikipedia, Uí Mháine (2026)
11. Patrick Woulfe, Ó Coileáin, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
12. Sir Bernard Burke, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales (1884). Entries 'O'Cullen (the Sept of O'Coillen)', 'O'Cullen (Ballydonoghragh, co. Wicklow)' and 'Cullen' (Scotland; East Sheen).
13. Wikipedia, Cullen baronets (2026)
14. Wikipedia, Uí Fidgenti (2026)
15. Patrick Woulfe, Mac Cailín, in Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
16. Wikipedia, Paul Cullen (cardinal) (2026)
17. Census of Ireland 1901 and 1911, and Census of Population 1926, National Archives of Ireland. Counts compiled by surnames.ie from the irishcensus.com transcription (dataset 20260831130351). 1926 data © National Archives of Ireland, CC BY 4.0.

How we compile these figures: methodology.