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Irish surnames are linked to the long Gaelic heritage of the Island nation. The original Gaelic form of the name Harrah is Ó hEaghra, connoting a descendant of Eaghra. Harrah is a patronymic surname, which derived from the vernacular given name tradition.
The surname Harrah was first found in County Sligo (Irish: Sligeach), in the province of Connacht in Northwestern Ireland, where they held a family seat from ancient times.
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Harrah research. Another 111 words (8 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Harrah History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
The scribes who created documents long before either the Gaelic or English language resembled their standardized versions of today recorded words as they sounded. Consequently, in the Middle Ages the names of many people were recorded under different spellings each time they were written down. Research on the Harrah family name revealed numerous spelling variations, including Hara, Harra, O'Hara and others.
More information is included under the topic Early Harrah Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
In the United States, the name Harrah is the 14,306th most popular surname with an estimated 2,487 people with that name. 1
Suffering from poverty and racial discrimination, thousands of Irish families left the island in the 19th century for North America aboard cramped passenger ships. The early migrants became settlers of small tracts of land, and those that came later were often employed in the new cities or transitional work camps. The largest influx of Irish settlers occurred with Great Potato Famine during the late 1840s. Although the immigrants from this period were often maligned when they arrived in the United States, they provided the cheap labor that was necessary for the development of that country as an industrial power. Early immigration and passenger lists have revealed many immigrants bearing the name Harrah: