Conn is a masculine English and Irish-language given name, [1] as well as an English-language surname. [2] The origin of the given name is uncertain. It may be related to the Old Irish cond ("intellect", "mind", "king"), or perhaps to the Old Irish cenn ("head", "chief", "queen"). It is cognate with the Welsh, Cornish and Breton 'penn' ("head"), deriving ultimately from the proto-Celtic kʷennom. [3] The latter word-origin may have resulted from a popular, but incorrect etymology, applied to the Old Irish terms Leth Cuinn and Dál Cuinn; these terms originally meant "half of the chief" or "half of the king" and "tribe of the chief" but were mistakenly regarded to mean "half of Conn" and "tribe of Conn". [4] In some cases the given name is as a short form of names that begin with the first syllable Con- (such as the names Conor and Connor ). [5] According to historian C. Thomas Cairney, the Conns were a chiefly family of the Oirghialla or Airgíalla tribe who were in turn from the Laigin tribe who were the third wave of Celts to settle in Ireland during the first century BC. [6]