Family name origins & meanings
- English : habitational name from places in Cumbria, Lincolnshire, and Northamptonshire. The first gets its name from Old English Haferingtūn ‘settlement (Old English tūn) associated with someone called Hæfer’, a byname meaning ‘he-goat’. The second probably meant ‘settlement (Old English tūn) of someone called Hæring’. Alternatively, the first element may have been Old English hæring ‘stony place’ or hāring ‘gray wood’. The last, recorded in Domesday Book as Arintone and in 1184 as Hederingeton, is most probably named with an unattested Old English personal name, Heathuhere.
- Irish (County Kerry and the West) : adopted as an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hArrachtáin ‘descendant of Arrachtán’, a personal name from a diminutive of arrachtach ‘mighty’, ‘powerful’.
- Irish (County Kerry) : adopted as an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hIongardail, later Ó hUrdáil, ‘descendant of Iongardal’.
- Irish : reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hOireachtaigh ‘descendant of Oireachtach’, a byname meaning ‘member of the assembly’ or ‘frequenting assemblies’.