Gahan (surname) Irish language "Mac Gaoithín", meaning "son of "Gaoithín"", although the more common Anglicised form of this Gaelic name is "McGeehan" in Ulster. Gahan (surname) Gahan (and its variant Gahame) is a surname with several different origins. One origin of the surname is from a reduced form of "McGahan", which is in turn an Anglicised form of the Irish language "Mac Eacháin", meaning "son of "Eachán"". Another origin of the name, in Leinster, is from a reduced form of the Irish language "Ó Gaoithin", meaning "descendant of "Gaoithín"". The personal name "Gaoithín" is a diminutive of "gaoth", meaning "wise", or "wind".
Mac and Mc together example has been taken as representative of a possible paradigm. A book on filing rules from 1918 gives an example showing Mc and M' treated as abbreviations, i.e. for Mac, and ordered as if in the expanded version; and a similar book from 1922 makes the rule one of a number that apply also to St. (Saint) and Mrs. (Mistress). A 1938 book that is a comparative study of cataloguing in various British libraries regarded Mac + Mc + M' sorting as an example of achieved "standardisation" in alphabetisation. It gave further examples where, it argued, such standardisation would be