BREEN. TlKn in 1607 Hugh ONeill, earl of Tyrone, went into voluntary exile, the government of James I. wished to displace his adherents from Ulster, in order to introduce an English colony there. One of the seven native septs thus dispossessed were banished to the distant county of Kerry, where, to avoid persecution, they dropped the unpopular name of O'Neill, and adopted instead that of Breen, from Braon O'Neill, the head of then- branch. Inf. H. H, Breen, Esq.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.