Is the name O'Henry Irish or Scottish?

Question:Hi I'm trying to find out if my family is Irish or Scottish... My moms last name(b4 my dad of course) started out as O'Henry but over time the O got dropped and now its just Henry and we all thought it was Irish but some one Irish told my mom that sounds more like a scottish name so we want to know if were Irish or not!?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Hi I'm trying to find out if my family is Irish or Scottish... My moms last name(b4 my dad of course) started out as O'Henry but over time the O got dropped and now its just Henry and we all thought it was Irish but some one Irish told my mom that sounds more like a scottish name so we want to know if were Irish or not!?

No it's definately Irish........The "O" in a name means 'the son of'. For example: Patrick O' Connell strictly means Patrick the son of Connell in Irish.

The same applies in Scottish names but 'Mac' or 'Mc' is used instead. So Hamish Mc Donnell strictly means Hamish the son of Donnell.

Although both are diluted now in both countrys but this is where the originate from.

it is irish.any name with an O'something is irish

more likely irish.

No it is Irish. if it was Scottish it would be McHenry or Machenry.
Having said that the Scots and the Irish are very similar in lots of ways as the word "Scot" is a very old name for "bandit". You see the Scots originally came from Ireland raiding the Scottish coastline

The O prefix in Irish names means descendant of whereas Mac, Mc or Fitz means son of. Now whether O'Henry is of gaelic origin, I don't know. Some English immigrated to Ireland and took up Irish customs. Actually I have some O'Dell in my family which isn't really of Gaelic origin even though there were O'Dells in Ireland. They intermmaried with the native Irish and became Irish themselves.

irish
anything o'whatever is always irish

From searching in google, I found a reference to "The Book of Ulster Surnames" by Robert Bell that suggests O'Henry is probably from the Irish name ó hInneirghe. It is true that "O" is found in Irish names. But the only way to find out for sure where your ancestors were from is to research them.
Here are more references to the name ó hInneirghe: http://homepage.eircom.net/~kthomas/name... (look under "Henry")
http://www.ulsterclans.org/baronies.html (in the very last paragraph)
http://www.goireland.com/genealogy/famil...