McHugh
An Irish patronymic meaning “son of Hugh,” from Gaelic Mac Aodha.
The #1,962 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 16,760 Americans shares it.
Etymology
McHugh is the Anglicized form of Irish Mac Aodha, literally “son of Aodh.” Aodh was an old Gaelic personal name often rendered in English as Hugh, so the surname came to mean “son of Hugh.” The name is therefore a patronymic, not a direct reference to the English word “hugh” itself.
History
19th- and early-20th-century surname writers regularly glossed McHugh as the Irish equivalent of “son of Hugh,” and also linked it with forms like Hewson. It is a well-established Irish surname, found in several spellings and often standardized in English as McHugh or MacHugh. Like many Irish surnames, it became fixed in English records through Anglicization and later migration, especially to Britain and North America.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Older sources sometimes treat McHugh and Hewson as functionally equivalent in meaning, since both point back to the personal name Hugh/Aodh.
From the historical record
“McCreedy. See Read McCrobie. Robert’s son McCue. See McHugh McElgunn. See Gunn McEnery. See Hendry McFadden. From the Irish Mac- Paidin ; a p.n. (the son of little Patrick)”
— British Family Names: their origin and meaning (2nd ed.)