Hegarty
An Irish surname from a Gaelic family name, long associated especially with Cork and other parts of the west and north of Ireland.
The #9,672 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 92,025 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Hegarty is an anglicized form of an Irish Gaelic surname written in older sources as O hEigeartaigh. The exact old Gaelic meaning is not fully certain in the 19th-century scholarship, but it is treated as a native Irish clan name rather than an imported English one. The many spellings recorded in English, including Hagarty, Hagerty, Hegerty, and Heggerty, reflect different attempts to render the Irish sound into English letters.
History
Woulfe and Matheson both group Hegarty among Irish surnames with several anglicized spellings. Matheson notes that the name was heavily concentrated in Ireland, especially in Cork, with further clusters in Donegal, Clare, Londonderry, and Mayo. In modern usage it remains a distinct Irish surname and is well established in Irish diaspora communities, including the United States.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Matheson’s county tables show Hegarty as especially common in Cork, which helped make it one of the more regionally marked Irish surnames in his early-20th-century surveys.
From the historical record
“0 hA5AticAi5, Agarty, Hagarty, Hagerty, Hegarty, Hegerty, Heggerty, etc. C h-A^AitTTAij. Hearty ; Hegarty. 0 h/AjmAill, O'Hamill, Hamill,”
— Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish names and surnames