
Origin of the Name Hennigan
The
Hennigan family history was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. Variants of Hennigan include O'Hannigan and Hanagan. This name in Irish is O'hAnnagain and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from County Limerick .
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.
The first reference of the name was in 1556 when a John Hannigane, County Waterford, obtained his English Liberty and a generation later the name occurs among Jurymen and trade guild officials in Dublin and Inishowen. Later we find it as a principal Irish name in the Barony of Decies, County Waterford in the Census of 1659 and in modern times it is chiefly found in Counties Dublin , Waterford and Tyrone.
The Hennigan 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 Hennigan descendants.