0601B

Heaney (also Heeney)
Although found in every province of Ireland, Heaney is nowhere so common as in Ulster, where it is most common in Co Armagh with a large concentration in Co Louth.
Though there were other clans outside Ulster, the largest and most important were the O�Heaneys of Oriel (an area near Co Fermanagh). The Gaelic version of this name is spelt � h�ighnigh. In medieval times their sway extended into Fermnagh, and � h�ighnigh was chief of Fermanagh before the Maguires took over in 1202. Before that they were kings of Fermanagh and of Oriel. Another sept of O�Heaney were erenaghs of Banagher in Co Derry, the church of which was reputedly founded by St Muireadach O�Heaney in 1121. In the 17th century the name was recorded as numerous in counties Louth (also a part of Oriel), Armagh and Derry.

When the Danes and later the Norwegians invaded England and settled in large numbers, they naturally took their own names with them. Still more important, they retained their own ideas about naming. It was the Scandinavian method of naming rather than the names themselves, that eventually had the biggest effect on the English naming system. Among the Anglo-Saxons, personal names that had been made famous by distinguished ancestors had always been honoured by not using them for descendants. The Scandinavians, however, readily duplicated their personal names in different generations of the same family. It was also their common practice to name their son after a famous chief or a personal friend. Many believed that the soul of an individual was represented or symbolised by his name, and that the bestowal of a name was a means of calling up the spirit of the man who had borne it into the spirit of the child to whom it was given.
The natural result of consciously re-using the same personal names, apart from creating a far smaller central stock of names, was to make those names far less effective as
identifiers of individuals. When exact identification was particularly necessary it became essential to add a second name which gave extra information about the person concerned. This did not lead to the immediate creation of surnames, but it was certainly a step in that direction.
The new second names that came into existence at this period, at first among the Scandinavian settlers, were temporary surnames, similar to nicknames in many ways. It is useful to distinguish them as a historical phenomenon, however, from surnames or nicknames as we know them today. For this purpose they have often been referred to as �bynames�. Bynames were meant to be added to someone�s personal to help identification, but sometimes they simply replaced it completely. As substitute personal names they were probably not always to their bearers� liking. Many could quite well have begun life with quite flattering traditional names, only to have become something more derogatory later on. We can all hark back to our schooldays to recall such indignities. And, as is the way of the world, some of these names later became true surnames or family names. So too did the surnames of those whose describing their occupation, - Hunter, Wright, Smith, Carpenter.

The need for a supplementary name had made itself felt in England before the Normans arrived, but the Normans, even more than the Scandinavians, believed in using the same personal names over and over again. They also needed second names to identify them properly, especially in legal documents. However the system began, one can imagine how this passing of a name from one generation to the next was noted as an aspect of aristocratic behaviour - for it would certainly have begun at baronial level - and duly imitated.

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And what has all this got to do with us Heagneys ?

In the �Book of Ulster Surnames� there is an entry for the surname Heaney. It reads as follows: