Do you have Irish surnames in your family tree? If the answer is yes, then read on – and discover more about the surnames of Ireland, where they come from – and see if you can spot some of your Irish surnames.

Saint Brigid and The Story of a Remembered Soldier

There also seem to be a lot of commemorations over the past while – for example, we had the 1916 Irish Easter Rising centenary one year ago. That same year we had another commemoration – it was the centenary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme – the bloodiest battle of the…

The Origins of Two Irish Counties.

It’s a fine “soft day” here in County Cork this morning, there is a fine shroud of mist covering the hillside as well as keeping our complexions moist! The weather, being what it is today, gives us a good excuse to head to a local barstool later and enjoy watching the Green, Red and Blue…

Have you heard of The Irish Banshee?

We coming to the end of Autumn here, but Halloween is just around the corner. The festival of Halloween has been known as “Samhain” (pronounced Sow-en) for many centuries in the Celtic world. It marked the time to bring the animals down from higher pastures. We entered into the darker half of the year –…

The Music of Chief O’Neill

When a new reader signs up for our weekly Letter from Ireland – we ask them to supply the Irish surnames in their family tree AND the county their ancestor emigrated from. So far we have collected over 21,000 Irish entries in our database of Irish surnames representing over 3,750 different surnames. If you’d like to…