Kerrigan

Meaning of Kerrigan

Kerrigan, deployed as a feminine given name in Anglo-American contexts, traces its etymology to the Irish Gaelic surname Ó Ciaragáin, literally “descendant of the little dark one,” in which the element ciar (“dark”) is combined with the diminutive -agán (“little”); this designation originally identified a sept centered in Connacht, particularly within present-day County Galway, reflecting the structured kinship and territorial patterns of medieval Ireland. In contemporary use, Kerrigan preserves the original phonetic architecture—KEHR-ih-gan—with primary stress on the second syllable, thereby reconciling Gaelic prosody with English phonological conventions. Its adoption by parents seeking a name that conveys both historical depth and modern distinctiveness has secured it a stable presence in U.S. Social Security Administration data, where it consistently ranks near the 900th position in annual birth statistics. Moreover, the name’s appearance in global popular culture—most notably in science-fiction literature and interactive media—has further consolidated its profile, situating Kerrigan at the intersection of ancestral lineage and evolving cultural narratives.