Higgerty? Are they Hingertys or are they Hegartys?

 

A fellow One Namer was exploring his surname of interest on the Commonwealth War Graves site.

He decided to type in HINGERTY to see if there was anyone there who might be of interest for the Hingerty One Name Study... and this is what he found.....

He sent the list to me and asked if Higgerty was a variation of Hingerty????? 

So, of course I had to investigate.......

First stop, Goggle "Higgerty surname" to see if anyone else has explored the origins of this name.....

House of Names (a site designed to sell you surname memorabilia which may or may not be historically correct) had the following:

A foundation location of Cork was promising as our O'Hingerdells were there from at least the 12th century to early 1600s....

However, the entry then went on to connect the Higgerty name with Hegarty variations.... Hegartys are NOT Hingertys. Our beginnings are in different areas of Ireland and from very different clans.

Forebears had a very interesting entry

I was very excited to see the link to HINGERTY and to HIONGADAIL and the density in Canada gave me a place to start searching......

But could I find Higgertys in Ireland in similar places where one would find Hingertys, Hingertons, Ingertons etc? 

According to Barry Griffin's surname maps of Ireland Higgertys were few and far between in Ireland in 1901 and 1911 and were to be found in Northern Ireland....

John Genham listed the following totals and locations (all in Northern Island) for Higgerty births in Ireland between 1864 and 1913 

A search of Civil Registrations of Births, Deaths and Marriages on Irish Genealogy listed a low number of records, mostly located in Northern Ireland and none located in Hingerty related locations. 

A search on the same site for Higgerty Church Baptisms and marriages prior to Civil Registration resulted in only one Baptism entry for Dublin. 

This would indicate that Higgerty was a fairly recent variation, but didn't give us any evidence that it was a variation of Hingerty.

So, it was time to do some tree building... building multiple research trees for families in Canada, England, USA and Australia- back into Ireland to see if we could connect Higgerty to Hingerty and down to the present day to find Higgerty researchers.

Many hours later I concluded the following.

1. There are a few Higgerty researchers out there- but only a few- mostly in Canada.

2. The Higgertys of Canada have their roots in Northern Ireland.

3. The Higgertys of England have deep roots in England with no connections to Ireland.

4. It was difficult to build trees for the few Higgertys who immigrated to Australia and no current day Higgertys could be found.

5. I could find no Higgertys past or present with connections to Hingertys or Hingerty related locations.

So... there may be a few stray Higgertys who are Hingertys with a spelling variation..... but for the most part, there is no compelling evidence that the Higgerty surname is a variation of Hingerty nor that it evolved from the O'Hingerdel clan name (with all it's various spellings).

To be certain many more trees would need to be built and a few YDNA testers recruited..... maybe one day.... 

If you are a HIGGERTY and have any information or would like to explore possible HINGERTY connections, please

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