From http://www.word-detective.com/110598.html#hooligan Dear Word Detective: With the recent coverage of the World Cup soccer event (I'm glad it will be another four years before I hear "gooooooooaaaaaal"), the word "hooligan" was mentioned with depressing regularity. One sportscaster opined that the word refers to an actual person, an Irish "thug" named Hooligan. Can that be correct? As to the "Irish thug" theory of "hooligan" you heard, the answer would have to be "probably not," but no one knows for sure exactly where "hooligan" came from. The word first appeared in England in the summer of 1898 in newspaper articles about a gang of young street toughs who called themselves "the Hooligans," although apparently none of them was actually named Hooligan. Some authorities at the time maintained that "hooligan" was a mispronunciation of "Hooley's gang," but no one was ever able to trace a specific "Hooley," so that theory remains unverified. Another possible source of the name is a music hall song of the period featuring a rowdy Irish family called the Hooligans. Hooligan had also been used since at least the 1870s as a "funny name" by several authors, including Mark Twain.

Always up to their hoodlums in shenanigans and high jinx.

Put them in the army out of soceities way

Maybe try and deal with them in a way that doesn't merely include accusations, neglect or even abuse. People label them and deal with them, but it seems nobody is ever willing to consider why they're acting this way, or want to help or at least listen to them. Youth rebellion is often translated as a need to speak out and find a friend, and I guess since most of us know this as a near established fact, we just don't care.

I have also heared a story of an Irish family called hoolighan who were a thorn in the backside of the English opressors during i think the 19th century. The English called them thugs but to the local population the were noble rebels.

One theory says that the word came from Patrick Hoolihan (or Hooligan), an Irish bouncer and thief who lived in the London borough of Southwark. Other source says: "The original hooligans were a spirited Irish family of that name whose proceedings enlivened the drab monotony of life in Southwark about fourteen years ago".

The term hooligan is believed to be a corruption of the Irish surname Houlihan. +3