Origin of the Name Hourigan
family history was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives.
Over the centuries Surnames developed a wide number of variants. Different spellings of the same name can be traced back to an original root. Additionally when a bearer of a name emigrated it was not uncommon that their original name would be incorrectly transcribed in the record books at their new location. Surnames were also often altered over the years based on how they sounded phonetically and depending on the prevailing political conditions it may have been advantageous to change a name from one language to another.
Variants of the name Hourigan
include Horgan, Horrigan, Harrigan and Organ. This name in Irish is O'hArgain or O'hOdhragain and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from Munster .
A sept or clan is a collective term describing a group of persons whose immediate ancestors bore a common surname and inhabited the same territory. Irish septs and clans that are related often belong to even larger groups, sometimes called tribes.
An early record of the name finds that David O'Horegane, a kern of Leix, received a pardon in the year 1551. A most notable person of the name was Rev. Mathew Horgan, 1777-1849, who was a Gaelic scholar and poet. In the year 1890 there were 66 birth registrations of the name recorded in Counties Cork and Kerry and no less than four placenames are named after the sept, they being called Ballyhorgan. In 1901 there were 142 families of the name registered in Counties Cork and Kerry and in modern times it is in these Counties that the name is to be mostly found.
The Hourigan coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all Hourigan descendants.