Higgins
An Irish surname of Antrim, Cork, Dublin, Galway, and Mayo. In the 2010 US census it was carried by 79,803 people, the 400th most common surname in the country.
Higgins is the anglicised form of two distinct Irish names. Some you can hear in the English name; others look and sound nothing like it, and were simply swapped for it.
Ó Haoilleacháin
Ó Huige, Ó Huigín, Ó Uiginn. This family stood in Co. Sligo and Co. Westmeath.
Where the name comes from
Ó hUigín is descendant of Uige, which means knowledge, skill or ingenuity, and the family lived up to it. A branch of the southern Ui Neill in the present Co. Westmeath, they were one of the most distinguished literary families in Ireland: the Four Masters mention no fewer than eleven poets and professors of poetry of the name.
A branch settled in Co. Sligo, where they acquired large estates in the parishes of Achonry and Kilmacteige and held them down to the Cromwellian confiscations. The name is now common in most parts of Ireland.
A quite different name lands on Higgins near Dungarvan: Ó hAoilleacháin, which lost its initial f, and which is strangely anglicised Higgins there and Hedigan about Kilkee.
The Higgins counties, photographed
Antrim
The Antrim coast road runs about 25 miles between the cliffs and the sea, with nine glens coming down to it. The rock is basalt, the same flow that formed the Giant's Causeway. Scotland is 12 miles off at the narrowest point and visible on a clear day.
Cork
Cork is the largest county in Ireland. Three peninsulas run west into the Atlantic: Beara, Sheep's Head and Mizen, with the population thinning the further out you go. My gallery is in Glengarriff at the head of Bantry Bay, so it's the ground I photograph most.
Allihies Coast, Cork
Co. Cork
Dún an Óir, Cape Clear Island, Cork
Co. Cork
The Fastnet Lighthouse, Co. Cork
Co. Cork
Dublin
Dublin is a county as well as a city. The bay has Howth at the north end and Killiney Hill at the south, the Muglins are a pair of rocks off Dalkey, and the Dublin Mountains start about half an hour from the city centre.
Galway
Connemara takes up the west of the county: the Twelve Bens, blanket bog, and fields walled off into very small squares. The Aran Islands sit at the mouth of Galway Bay. The Gaeltacht starts a few miles west of Galway city.
Poll an tSéideáin, Inis Meáin, Aran Islands, Co. Galway
Co. Galway
The Plassey, Inis Oirr, Aran Islands, Co. Galway
Co. Galway
Mayo
Achill is the largest island off the Irish coast and is joined to the mainland by a bridge. Clew Bay is full of drumlins that were drowned when the sea rose, which is where the story about an island for every day of the year comes from. Croagh Patrick stands over the south side of the bay. Mayo's population is still less than half what it was before the Famine.
All Antrim prints · All Cork prints · All Dublin prints · All Galway prints · All Mayo prints
Notable bearers
Michael D. Higgins (born 1941), writer, politician, and poet.
Mary Higgins Clark (1927-2020), writer, journalist, and novelist.
John Higgins (born 1975), snooker player.
Alex Higgins (1949-2010), snooker player.
Jack Higgins (1929-2022), writer, screenwriter, and novelist.
About this page
The counties on this page are where the name was thickest on the ground in Ireland a century and a half ago, not a claim about any one family. Names moved around inside the country as much as they left it. The photographs are mine, made in the counties named.
More Irish surnames: King · Reynolds · Ford · Hunt · Hart · Burke · Banks · May · Hopkins · Leonard · Moran · Thornton
How common the name was
In 1890, 205 births were registered under Higgins in Ireland, most of them in Antrim, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Mayo, and Roscommon.
| Connacht | 105 | 51% |
|---|---|---|
| Leinster | 45 | 22% |
| Munster | 32 | 16% |
| Ulster | 23 | 11% |
| Ireland | 205 |
Roscommon is the one I haven't worked in.