Irish surnames starting with H

The H names in brief

• Halpin · Ó hAilpín · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Ailpín. Woulfe traces the name to County Monaghan, though it has been found in Limerick for centuries. Halpin, Halpenny and Halfpenny were used interchangeably before literacy settled the spelling — the registers of Drogheda record all three for the same families.
• Hanlon · Ó hAnluain · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Anluan, 'great champion'. Lords of Orior and hereditary standard-bearers of Ulster. Dispossessed, Redmond O'Hanlon became the most feared (and most gentlemanly) highwayman in 17th-century Ireland, with a price on his head paid in the end by his own foster-brother.
• Hayes · Ó hAodha · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Aodh, 'fire'. A dozen unrelated septs all descend from someone called Aodh, fire, anglicised as Hayes in Munster and Hughes in Ulster. One name, many flames.
• Healy · Ó hÉilidhe / Ó hÉalaighthe · Gaelic sept
  'claimant' (Sligo) or 'ingenious' (Cork). Two septs: one from the shores of Lough Arrow, one from Muskerry. Tim Healy, the barbed Bantry barrister, became the first Governor-General of the Free State.
• Hennessy · Ó hAonghusa · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Aonghus. A midland and Munster sept whose most famous son, Richard Hennessy of Ballymacmoy, served in France's Irish Brigade and founded a cognac house in 1765. The world still drinks his name.
• Hickey · Ó hÍcidhe · Gaelic learned family
  Descendant of the healer (íce, 'healing'). Hereditary physicians to the O'Briens of Thomond — the surname literally means 'healer's descendant', and their medical manuscripts in Irish survive in the great libraries.
• Higgins · Ó hUiginn · Gaelic learned family
  Descendant of Uiginn — 'the Viking'. Poets by trade with a Norse name; the bardic school of the Ó hUiginn served all Connacht. Ambrosio O'Higgins became Viceroy of Peru, and his son Bernardo liberated Chile.
• Hogan · Ó hÓgáin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Ógán, 'the young one'. A Dál gCais sept from Lower Ormond, kin to the O'Briens. Galloping Hogan, the rapparee who guided Sarsfield's midnight ride to Ballyneety in 1690, is the name's legend.
• Hore · de Hór · Norman-English
  Hoar — 'grey-haired'. Wexford's grey-heads since 1170, chroniclers included — Herbert Hore's manuscripts are still the county's documentary bedrock. The Cork branch banked its way into the modern age.
• Hughes · Mac Aodha / Ó hAodha · Gaelic sept
  Son (or descendant) of Aodh, 'fire'. The northern form of the fire-name. Archbishop John Hughes, a Tyrone famine emigrant, built St Patrick's Cathedral in New York — 'Dagger John' to those who crossed him.
• Hurley · Ó hUrthuile / Ó Muirthile · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Urthuile — 'sea-tide'. Tide-named septs of the south-west; Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley, tortured with boiling boots and hanged in 1584, is the name's martyr — beatified four centuries on.

Also spelled with H

These are listed on the atlas under another spelling, but the H form is the one many families carry.