Letter Archive
Welcome to the letter archive page for the weekly "Letter from Ireland". We started to write these letters in 2013 covering Irish Genealogy & Family History, Irish Surnames, Irish Culture & Customs and Ireland Travel, here you'll find a link to all of them.
Browse the letters listed on this page and jump to one that interests you, or enter a placename, surname or other item in the search box below to see related letters.
All of our weekly letters to date
Were you, or a member of your family, born on the 4th of July? We asked our Facebook readers and 6 of you said YES! So, today, we’re going to look at Georges family name – and the Irish family names of our 6 Yankee Doodle Dandy readers. One of the most interesting things about…
We’re “doing” the Ring of Kerry on the Wild Atlantic Way at the moment – travelling from Kenmare to Sneem to Caherdaniel to Waterville to Ballinskelligs to Valentia to Cahirciveen to Glenbeigh to Killorglin (phew!). As we drive around the Ring of Kerry we come across so many tour buses (it’s that time of year!).…
Meitheamh – pronounced “meh-hev” – is the Irish word for June, and therefore more or less means mid-summer. The growth in the fields is at its green height – grass seems to be shooting up an inch a day up to this point. In the old Celtic Calendar there were four minor festivals through the…
The River Bandon gets it’s name from the Celtic goddess for water – Bann – and rises near the town of Drimoleague. Through the many aerial shots used in the programme we see all the towns, bridges and castles along the way. And we meet many of the local characters. During its first few miles…
Many Irish families seem to feature multiple instances of the same forenames e.g you might find dozens of Johns, Marys or Richards – but very few Joans, Timothys or Michaels. This cumulative effect is often down to “Irish naming patterns” – but sometimes families have a special place for some given names. Last week, I…
Todays letter is a little different – it features an imagined ancestral letter written by one of our readers as well as their imagined response. We start with a letter received in Ireland back in the mid 1800s from Nova Scotia in what was to become Canada: “Hello, My name is Lawrence Cavanagh and I…
A few weeks back, we headed north from Cork to the city of Galway and nearby Connemara. What a beautiful part of the world—maybe you have been there? One of the first things you notice on approaching Galway city is the series of traffic roundabouts that dot its’ periphery. These fourteen roundabouts have a family…
A few weeks back, I sent a Letter from Ireland out to all of our subscribers around the word and asked “Which of these do you want more than anything?” I then gave a list of hopes, wishes and dreams that our readers have been sending to me over the last two years. As I said in…
What do the Great Wall of China, the Sydney Opera House, the great Pyramid in Egypt, the Niagara Falls and the London Eye all have in common? They are all, of course, world icons—but for one day this year, these and many other similar icons will turn green. For one full night in the year…
Belfast, which is known the world over for The Troubles, tragedies like the Titanic, and hard times… yet such a place raised a resilient woman who overcame adversity and brought joy and a different picture of Belfast to a small community a world away. The poor daughter of John Johnston and – her children never…