Harrigan

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Edward Harrigan was a 19th-century American comedian and songwriter known for musical plays about Irish-American life in New York
2. A surname borne most famously by Edward Harrigan, the stage performer and playwright who popularized Irish-American urban comedy
3. The family name of a 19th-century American entertainer who wrote and starred in comic musicals portraying New York's working-class immigrants

Etymology: "Harrigan" is a surname in origin, and the word's journey from Irish family name to English noun is what makes it interesting. It is a reduced, anglicized form of the Irish Ó hArragáin, itself a corruption of Ó hÁnradháin, meaning "descendant of Ánradhán." The name Ánradhán is a diminutive of "ánradh," a word for "warrior," so the family name carries a sense of a warrior's descendants, though the Irish surname was shaped by centuries of spelling and pronunciation shifts before reaching English. The English-speaking world knew the name chiefly through Irish and American families, and its noun use reflects that: "harrigan" has long been associated with a wild, rowdy kind of street revelry. Related surnames such as Hanrahan and Horgan come from the same Irish root, which is why the three look so alike today.

Synonyms: hooligan, ruffian, rowdy