Heaney — Of Derry

Heaney anglicises Ó hÉighnigh, a name whose root has not been settled with confidence despite genuine attempts to trace it. The family were established in County Derry, on the same Ulster ground later made famous, centuries on, by the Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney.

A name whose old meaning has slipped away, though nobody's forgotten what the name itself went on to mean in Irish literature.

Irish form: Ó hÉighnigh