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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English (Lancashire) : unexplained; possibly a variant of Scottish and Irish Callan.
  • French : metonymic occupational name for someone who owned or sailed a large cargo vessel, from a Picard or southern French variant of Old French chaland ‘large cargo vessel’.
  • Norwegian : habitational name from any of several farmsteads in Agder and Vestlandet named Kalland or Kaland, generally from Old Norse Kalfaland, a compound of kalfr ‘calf’ + land ‘(piece of) land’.

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