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
This is the part of the letter from Ireland where I (Mike) will attempt to answer all your Irish surname questions – or at least steer you in the right direction. All you need to do is to write out your question in the comments section at the end of this page – and I’ll…
When someone signs up for our weekly Letter from Ireland, we ask them for the Irish surnames in their family and the counties in Ireland their ancestor came from originally. As a result, we now have about 25,000 entries on our list. The following names are ones we received from readers whose ancestors came from…
We start our journey along the Wild Atlantic Way in the lovely town of Kinsale. We are very fortunate to have this on our doorstep as we live about twenty minutes away. Every school child in Ireland knows this place for the Battle of Kinsale which took place in 1601 and made real the English…
We left the pier in Baltimore (sharing a name and a link with Baltimore city in the USA) at 10.30am and headed off to Cape Clear across a gentle swell. Cape Clear has about 130 people living there permanently – all speaking Irish to varying degrees. That had dropped from a pre-famine population of over…
Which County in Ireland holds your Irish Roots? Everytime someone joins our “Letter from Ireland”, we ask the question: “Which County in Ireland did your Ancestors come from?” So far, we have had thousands of replies – and have built a list of 6470 entries. In the map above I have shown the distribution of…
All of these castles and tower-houses have a history – and that history is usually intertwined with the history and genealogy of different Irish families. Just this morning, I took the car to Ballincollig – our local town – to get two new tyres. Instead of waiting, I decided to go for a walk and…
So, I got in touch with Noreen Maher of Hibernia Roots and asked her some questions that we frequently come across in our reader forum. The purpose of this interview was to: Look at Irish family history research from the perspective of an active Genealogist on the ground. Provide you with a means of deciding…
Do you have Irish ancestors/an Irish surname in your family tree? What is the Irish character and what does it mean to you? Read on to find out various opinions on what it means to be Irish!
Do you have a favourite Irish name? Supposing you were looking for an Irish-related first name for your new baby (or wanted to gently hint about one for your grandchild)? What would it be? Seán? Kelly? Colleen? Conor? Patrick? Well, in Ireland we have experienced the highest birth rate of all the European countries over…
When we hear the word “Norman” in Ireland today, we often think of the “Anglo-Norman” invasion of Ireland in 1170 that we learned about in school. Many of my own friends today have Norman surnames – Roche, Barry, Fitzgerald and so on. We attended the same classes in school, played for the same teams and…