Moran

Moran is a surname and a given name used in various cultures. In Ireland, Moran is traditionally derived from the Gaelic Ó Móráin, a patronymic meaning “descendant of Mórán,” a historical personal name. The name is widespread in Ireland and has spread to other regions through migration, resulting in multiple spellings and anglicizations. As a given name, Moran is less common but appears in some modern contexts.

In statistics, Moran’s I is a widely used measure of spatial autocorrelation. It assesses whether similar values tend to occur near one another in geographic space, helping to identify patterns of clustering or dispersion. A positive Moran’s I indicates that similar values are spatially clustered, a negative value suggests dispersion, and a value near zero implies a random spatial pattern. The statistic is applied across disciplines such as geography, ecology, epidemiology, and environmental science, often in conjunction with significance testing to determine whether observed patterns are unlikely under spatial randomness.

Beyond personal names, Moran can appear in place names and, less commonly, in brand or organization names. The term’s significance in scholarly contexts is primarily associated with its use as a surname and with Moran’s I in spatial statistics.