Irish Genealogy & Family History Resources
Are you interested in discovering more on your Irish family history? In this section, I have included letters (and podcasts) that include stories, explanations and approaches to help you investigate your own Irish family history. You may even receive a little inspiration to break down one or two family history brick walls!
Browse the features 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 and podcasts.
Irish Genealogy & Family History Letters
Many readers often ask about the origin of an Irish first name in their family tree. Sometimes, it’s an unlikely Irish name such as “Jeremiah” – or sometimes a rare name such as “Gobnait”. It’s no secret that many of our shared Irish roman catholic ancestors borrowed names from the saints and angels of the…
When we lived in England during the 1990s, a phrase that I heard many times was “teaching granny to suck eggs”. Maybe you have heard it in your family? It was used in a context of not wanting to insult another person by stating what should be common sense already e.g. standing in front of…
Carina here – a bit of a change from Mike. I came downstairs earlier and pulled Mike off the keyboard to sent him back to bed – still stressing about “never missing a Letter from Ireland yet”. So I said, don’t worry, I’ll do it instead.At this stage I read the Letter from Ireland each…
Don’t you just love that word – “Diaspora”? Apparently, it comes from the Greek word for “scattering”. The reason I bring this up today is because Ireland appointed it’s first “Minister for the Diaspora”. I first remember the word being used in the context of an “Irish Diaspora” when President Mary Robinson used to light a candle of…
Just this week, I received a request from Helen Wyse (always listen to someone with Wyse as a surname!). Helen said: I am very curious about the naming conventions used for townlands, baronies, villages etc. which seem to repeated over and over again. So many places are prefixed or suffixed in such a way that it…
Irish Genealogy & Family History Podcasts
The Letter from Ireland is 6 years old this year – and the Green Room is 5 years of age! Here are 12 things that surprised us over the last 5 years as we answered thousands of Irish genealogy questions in the Green Room and with the Letter from Ireland.
Do you know where to start with your Irish Family History Research? Irish Genealogy has it’s quirks as you may have discovered! In this episode we bring you around our new Green Room Research Wheel that we have recently launched for our Green Room members.
Were any of your Irish ancestors shipped to Australia as convicts? Join us as we travel around Tasmania off the south coast of Australia – a place known to many of our Irish ancestors as “Van Diemen’s Land”.
Carina always wanted to find out more about the place where her paternal grandfather grew up – so she did – and discovered a lot more about her Irish grandfather’s “Hidden History”.
Carina never knew the surname that her paternal grandmother was born with – she only knew to call her “Granny”! So, we decided to find out a little more. What did we discover? Well, join us in this episode of the Letter from Ireland show as we go on a voyage of discovery – starting in a small shop in the Irish countryside – then on to a cottage on the fringes of Cork City – before finishing up at a grand castle.