This is a personal research project conducted on my own time and using my own limited resources. It started out as a one-name study of the Irish surname Pelan - including research into its origins and the family histories of those with this surname. However, as the research progressed, theories were developed and discoveries were made about connections to other surnames such as Palen, Paling and Pelling. As as a result, this project now encompasses many surnames from the British Isles and the respectively named diaspora around the world. It is difficult to group these under a common moniker so I have labelled these peoples as the P-L-N tribe as a reflection of a common but not exclusive phonetic pattern.

As it happens there is a similar Eastern European surname Pelán (sometimes written as Pelan) and a Breton surname Pelan (sometimes written as Pélan). There is no reason to suspect that these families are connected in any way and their orthographic similarity is just a coincidence.

This is a complementary two-part study. The first part uses conventional genealogy based on documentary evidence. The second part uses genetic genealogy and by necessity includes all surname varieties to ensure a complete and indepth picture of potentially connected lineages.