They’ve won Olympic and All-Ireland medals, broken world snooker records and topped the pop charts. But now the O’Sullivans are bidding to collectively enter the record books by breaking the world record for the largest gathering ever of people with the same surname.The world record is currently held by the Gallaghers, who wrote themselves into the Guinness World Records on September 9th, 2007, when 1,488 Gallaghers gathered in Letterkenny, Co Donegal. The O’Sullivans of west Cork and south Kerry are confident of overtaking them.O’Sullivan Clan Gathering organiser Jim O’Sullivan, from Castletownbere in west Cork, told The Irish Times that so far more than 3,350 O’Sullivans or Sullivans had registered to attend the gathering, which begins at 1.30pm on Saturday at Castletownbere GAA pitch.“We’re going well, we can’t complain – our numbers are looking good if people turn up. Even if half turn up, we’re still going well – we’ve got a great response from Sullivans and O’Sullivans all over Ireland and from much further afield too so it’s looking good.”O’Sullivan explained that the idea for the world-record-breaking attempt came from a visit last year by a group from Beara to Butte, Montana, where Beara men, including many O’Sullivans, emigrated to work in the copper mines after the Allihies mines closed.The flier for the Sullivan and O'Sullivan clan gathering. “A group of us from Beara along with members of Cork County Council travelled to Butte,” O’Sullivan said. “Thousands went to Butte to continue mining when the mining faded here in the late 1800s and many were O’Sullivans. When we were there it was suggested that we should host a gathering of O’Sullivans.”O’Sullivans and Sullivans from as far away as New Zealand and Australia are heading for west Cork this weekend as well others from El Salvador, Canada and the United States. Among them is the nominal current O’Sullivan clan chieftain Kelly Sullivan from Iowa, whose family history inspired the movie Saving Private Ryan.“Kelly is descended from a family of O’Sullivans who emigrated from Adrigole in famine times – they settled in Iowa where Kelly’s grandfather, Albert, was one of the five Sullivan brothers, along with George, Francis, Joseph and Madison, who joined the US navy when the second World War broke out.“All five brothers lost their lives when their cruiser, the USS Juneau, was torpedoed and sunk in the battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, and that led to the US to introduce this policy where brothers would not serve together. That proved the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.”[ Walking the 700km Beara Breifne Way: ‘I wanted to test myself, test my body’Opens in new window ]Visitors to Beara this weekend, in addition to trips to O’Sullivan castles such as Dunboy, will also have the chance to see a rare historical artefact linked with Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare.“When the Irish were defeated at Kinsale in 1601, Crown forces were on their way down here to oust O’Sullivan Beare, but when he was leaving Beara to make the 500km trek to Co Leitrim with the last of his followers in the winter of 1602, the O’Sullivan family chalice, the Berehaven Chalice, was lost,” he said.“It was found over 250 years later by a local man in a bog here in 1854 and it was bought by a silversmith in Cork before ending up with the National Museum of Ireland. “We’re getting it on loan now from the museum so it’s making its first return to Beara in over 400 years this weekend.”