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Very interesting thread. Why do Irish often have English surnames though? I think in Scotland it's because of English ancestry going back to the Middle Ages and expansion of the English language also going back to medieval times, while in Wales it's probably because of industrial revolution era migration of English people there mainly. Correct me if I'm wrong about this. I know Irish Protestants are mostly of English and Scottish descent, but the Irish Catholics also have English surnames that are not of Norman origins. Why is that? Were there a lot of English "Saxon" settlers in Norman ruled Ireland in the medieval period?
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There are Irish Protestants of fully Irish origin but the majority would be of English but also Catholics who converted to hold their lands and social status.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id...page&q&f=false
Some Irish names have been Anglicised so some "English" sounding names are Irish. An example would be a surname such as Harrington which most people would assume to be English as there are English Harringtons but in Ireland the name has an Gaelic origin.
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/g...arrington-clanThe name Harrington, in Ireland, was adopted as an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hArrachtáin "descendant of Arrachtán", a personal name from a diminutive of arrachtach meaning "mighty" or "powerful".
In County Kerry, Harrington was adopted as an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hIongardail, later Ó hUrdáil, meaning "descendant of Iongardal".
Harrington was also used in Irish as a reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó hOireachtaigh "descendant of Oireachtach" a byname meaning "member of the assembly" or "frequenting assemblies".
It is really difficult to know if some surnames are due to settlers from other parts of Britain or if they are Irish. There was plantations in Ireland so there has undoubtedly been some English, Welsh and Scottish ancestry in Ireland. Many Irish have surnames that have British origin.
Something which I find interesting is the Gallowglass surnames that Anglo-Celtic mentioned such as McDonnell.
The MacCabes for example came to Ireland as Gallowglass to the O'Reillys and O'Rourkes in 1350 from the Western Isles. The O'Reillys and O'Rourkes who lived in Cavan and Leitrim. There are quite a few Gallowglass families. The McSweeney's if I'm not mistaken left en masse from Argyll to be Gallowglass so that surname now is only in Ireland. I think it is the McSweeney's as I know some the Gallowglass families left Scotland completely to go to Ireland.
The Gallowglass were a mix of Gaels and Vikings so very good fighting men.
The galloglaigh were a group of highly-skilled mercenaries who settled all over Ireland after travelling from Scotland. They were Gaels’ like the native Irish and shared a common language and similar culture.
They were the potent result of the inter-breeding of Scottish Gaels with the Norse settlers who colonised the Scottish isles.
The word gallowglass itself is an Anglicisation of the Gaelic word 'galloglaigh' which means ‘foreign warrior’. The favourite weapon of these warriors was a six foot long, razor-sharp, double-sided battle- axe, called the ‘Sparth’, which was a development of the Viking axes of their ancestors. See them on the photo below.
https://www.enjoy-irish-culture.com/gallowglass.html
I think there is English and Norman ancestry in Ireland but the Irish are majority Bell Beaker. I know different dna tests have put percentages on the amount of English in certain areas. I'm not sure how easy it would be to detect something like English ancestry in the Irish or Irish ancestry in the British. There are difficulties when populations are pretty close. It will be interesting seeing two studies due out looking at the British to see how they go about breaking down ancestry that came after the Bell Beakers. I've read in the past that Dr Lara Cassidy will be bringing out some studies looking at the Irish in late Bronze Age upto the middle Medieval period. That should cover some of these sorts of questions.
Last edited by Grace O'Malley; 11-10-2021 at 01:02 PM.
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Here's some maps showing areas that were planted with English settlers.
Another map showing the situation in 1450.
Some of the plantations failed in Munster.
Another interesting fact is the area of Wexford retained an Anglic language called Yola until the 18th Century.
https://thenormanway.com/the-lost-language-of-yola/‘Yola’ is an extinct form of English that was spoken in this area of County Wexford for hundreds of years. The Yola language became extinct in the 1880s but many words and phrases still survive in the locality.
‘Yola’, which means ‘old’, evolved from ‘Old English’. Old English was brought to Ireland by the Normans. When communities of Flemish, French, Welsh, English and Frisian-speaking settlers came here, following the Normans, they and the existing norse/viking and native Irish populations had a major influence on the Yola language. It became a ‘muskaun’ or ‘mix’ of all these languages.
This is a good article about the topic.
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/col...85649-Jul2013/
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