Haran

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Brother of Abraham in the Hebrew Bible and father of Lot ; an ancient city in northern Mesopotamia associated with Abraham's journey
2. A figure in Genesis who was the brother of Abraham and the father of Lot ; a historic trading town in what is now southeastern Turkey
3. The Old Testament man who was Abraham's brother and Lot's father ; an old settlement in upper Mesopotamia, now in modern Turkey

Etymology: Haran is a proper noun, the name of Abraham's brother in the Hebrew Bible, and the name also turns up as a surname in Ireland. The Irish side is the one the source traces: it is a variant of "Haren", and it may also be a shortened form of "Hanrahan", itself an Irish surname. Both Haren and Hanrahan belong to the Irish naming tradition, which means the name is at home in Ireland rather than being a direct borrowing of the biblical name. The two origins are easy to confuse, because the spelling is identical. The biblical Haran, the brother who died in Ur before Abraham left for Canaan, is a separate name with its own history in Hebrew, while the Irish surname has a separate lineage through Gaelic naming. A reader who meets "Haran" in a family tree or a parish record is looking at one of these two families of names, and the spelling alone does not say which.