Origin of the Name Hanratty
The ancient history of the name
Hanratty was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives.
Over the centuries Surnames developed a wide number of variants. Different spellings of the same name can be traced back to an original root. Additionally when a bearer of a name emigrated it was not uncommon that their original name would be incorrectly transcribed in the record books at their new location. Surnames were also often altered over the years based on how they sounded phonetically and depending on the prevailing political conditions it may have been advantageous to change a name from one language to another.
Variants of the name Hanratty
include Hanraty and O'Hanraghty. These names are derived from the Gaelic O'hAnrachtaigh sept name, taken from the word 'anrachtach' meaning 'unlawful'.
A sept or clan is a collective term describing a group of persons whose immediate ancestors bore a common surname and inhabited the same territory. Irish septs and clans that are related often belong to even larger groups, sometimes called tribes.
The sept, a comparatively small one, were a branch of the great Maguires of Oriel. Statistics show that apart from the city of Dublin , in which, of course, there are migrant families from all parts of Ireland , nearly all bearers of the name reside in Counties Louth, Armagh, and Monaghan. The Chiefs of the O'Hanraghtys, of whom several are mentioned in the ancient document 'The Four Masters' between 1019 and 1161, under the style of Lords of Ui Meith, held a considerable territory in the northern part of the modern County Louth. The pressure of the Anglo-Norman invasion pushed these families westwards into County Monaghan, and in the twelfth century they settled near the modern town of Castleblaney.
The Hanratty coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all Hanratty descendants.