Irish History
0101 Beginning
0102 Airgialla
0103 Erne
0104 Fermanagh
Roman
Ireland ?
About Site
Site Compiler
Name Origin
Useful Addresses
Whose Where
Venerable Bede
Britain from 1AD
Articles
Sheepman
Gilhaeney Gilhaney Gilheaney Gilheany Gilheney
Haeney Hagany Hageney Hagney Haigney Hainey
Haney Heagany Heageny Heaghney Heagney
Heagny Heaney Heany Heeney Heeny
Hegeney Hegney Heney Higney
MacHeagney McHeagney
O'Heney
These then, are our family names, these are our family groups, this is our clan.
The typeface/font shown below is an anglicised adaptation of about seven versions spelled out in Old Irish scripts. Originally, in the Annals, our names would have been handwritten, changes would then have occurred in time and place, as did developments in the Irish language. We can get a visual flavour from these illustrations.
This website hopefully, will provide some of these answers. As we are unable to establish a line of descent to our original 'ErinIslanders' to any great extent, I have tried to provide a website which will give us an idea about our historical background. Our heritage, our legacy is vast, we are now located worldwide, and, who knows, as a clan, our aspirations ? If we were able to trace a definite line of descent, the next step would have been to try to illustrate how we ErinIslanders lived at whatever point of history, and to consider how life must have been for them.
Among the pros and cons of Ireland, and being Irish, we suffer greatly from having comparatively few written records. Details of our births marriages and deaths are scarce; where they were written down it was sometimes the case that the person responsible (such as a civic official) was unfamiliar with the Irish language, and a phonetic equivalent was used instead. Infrastructure (database) used to collate records was not always available or in place. More disastrously, two government buildings in Dublin, the Four Courts and the Customs House, were severely damaged during our Civil War in 1922/3 and many national archives stored therein were destroyed. In Ireland, we do now have a department of Government dedicated to our National Archives and much ongoing research takes place. Any relevant revelations will be added to our website as and when.
Being unable to trace a direct line of descent, we can have a look at what life was like for our Erinislanders over the centuries. We can observe those events which may have had a relevance, however little, to our present-day development. At school in Ireland, I had little interest in history. The Christian Brothers did their best to inspire some sort of awareness of our Irish heritage in me; however, in my ten years hard with them, their tough approach left me with little curiosity about the past. Our history in Ireland was largely a story of domination for 800 years, hence I find it sometimes difficult to be that bit impartial about our past. Now, as an adult, I may perceive a wider dimension � we Irish have our own history, which in turn is a part of our British neighbours history, which in turn is a part of European history.
Sometimes we got a mention in the historical archives, sometimes we didn't. For me. it all started out in 1990 in Dublin when I looked for an entry in a book of Irish surnames. My surname Heagney was listed, briefly, I made a mental note and forgot about it. By chance, years later in London, I had a look through a book of Northern Irish surnames, but alas no entry. Just as I was about to return the book to the library shelf, it fell open at the page for Heaney, - and with a mention too there for Heagney. Next came an accidental discovery on a map illustrating various minor kingdoms, there the original ErinIslanders had a mention as a 'lesser dynastic surname' in Prof Sean Duffy's 'Atlas of Irish History' published by Gill&Macmillan in 1997; - 'lesser dynastic' indeed, - I was off and running.
