hooligans

[mash101]

what is the origin of the word 'hooligan'?

[janelh]

It's of 19th-century origin, and is probably the name of a fictional Irish criminal family - maybe Hoolighan, Hooligan or Hoolihan - who may have featured in a music hall song.

[homer]

According to an article in the Irish Times by Diarmaid O Muirithe , the origin of hooligan is uncertain.
'Hooley first appeared in print in Bartlett's Dictionary of American English in 1877 spelt huly, and described as a noise, an uproar. It also gives the phrase "to raise huly".
'Many's the time I've heard that this hooley gave rise to hooligan, but this notion is based on folk-etymology, which says that London police court reports of 1898 refer to Hooley's Gang; unfortunately no positive confirmation of this has been discovered.
'In a Daily News item printed on 8 August, 1898, there is, "the constable said the prisoner belonged to a gang of rough youths calling themselves Hooligans". But this harmless gang may have taken its name either from a music hall song of 1880 which described the doings of a rowdy Irish family, the Hooligans, or from a character of the name which appeared in a series of adventures in Funny Folks, a popular journal of the day.
'An earlier citation gives a farce by T G Rodwell, first performed in 1824, and called More Blunders Than One, which featured a drunken Irish butler named Larry O'Hoolagan, whose name in Irish would have been O hUallachain. Better to side with Oxford and say that both hooley and hooligan are of uncertain lineage.'

[sgs]

Find out a little more about this at article 2133