Brendan (given name)
male given name
Brendan is an Irish masculine given name in the English language. It is derived from the Gaelic name Breandán, which is in turn derived from the earlier Old Irish Brénainn. The Old Welsh breenhin is the root of the name, meaning 'prince' or 'king'. The mediaeval Latin form of the name, Brendanus, has also influenced the modern English and Irish forms. Variant spellings are Brendon and Brenden. In some cases it is possible that the given name Brandon is also a variant of Brendan.
Etymology
The English Brendan is an Anglicised form of the Irish Breandán, in turn derived from the Old Irish Brénainn. This Old Irish personal name (pronounced [br'ēn-in']) is derived from a borrowing of the Old Welsh word breenhín, meaning 'a prince'. Both the English form and the modern Irish form, Breandán, are based upon the mediaeval Latin form Brendanus. According to one old Irish text there are 17 saints with the name.
“Brendan (given name)” enters the record as male given name. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Brendan, given and name can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Brendan (given name)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Brendan, given and name provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8471184. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brendan (given name)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.