Origin and history of hooligan
hooligan(n.)
"thug; hoodlum," first found in British newspaper police-court reports in the summer of 1898, almost certainly from the variant form of the Irish surname Houlihan, which figured as a characteristic comic Irish name in music hall songs and newspapers of the 1880s and '90s.
The 1899 book The Hooligan Nights, which purports to be a true journalistic account of the life of a young hoodlum, credits it to one Patrick Hooligan.
For in the [Irish Court] Patrick Hooligan lived a portion of his ill-spent life, and gave laws and a name to his followers; in the latter, the same Patrick was to be met night by night, until a higher law than his own put a period to his rule.
Moreover, my companion was one on whom a portion at least of Patrick Hooligan's mantle had fallen; a young man — he was scarcely more than seventeen — who held by the Hooligan tradition and controlled a gang of boys who made their living by their wits, and were ready for any devilry if you assured them of even an inadequate reward. [Clarence Rook, "The Hooligan Nights" 1899.]
The records of the Old Bailey do list a Patrick Hooligan, born 1862, who was convicted of theft in February of 1897; although it's impossible to confirm if he is the same one named in the book or if he is the genuine originator of the word.
As an "inventor" and adapter to general purposes of the tools used by navvies and hodmen, "Hooligan" is an Irish character who occupies week by week the front of a comic literary journal called Nuggets, one of the series of papers published by Mr. James Henderson at Red Lion House. Previous to publication in London, "Hooligan" appears, I believe, in New York in a comic weekly, and in London he is set off against "Schneider," a German, whose contrainventions and adaptations appear in the Garland (a very similar paper to Nuggets), which also comes from Mr. Henderson's office. "Hooligan" and "Schneider" have been running, I should think, for four or five years. [Notes and Queries, Oct. 15, 1898]
Internationalized 20c. in communist rhetoric as Russian khuligan, opprobrium for "scofflaws, political dissenters, etc."
