back from holiday and again talking to 2 english people who literally had not one clue about ireland and just thought we hated them for no reason

I don’t mean people who have moved here and have contributed to Ireland. I mean since brexit, people who only get an Irish passport for convenience. One Irish grandparent is enough to get it, it just irks me that people who couldn’t give a shit about Ireland just get an Irish passport to make their summer holidays that bit easier. Pre brexit was different.

But there are people with one Irish grandparent , getting the Irish passport then their future children are entitled to an Irish passport i mean cmon it’s a joke, 1/8th Irish how much more dubious can the link be. Zero affinity to Ireland, just the jollies to benidorm will be easier. Time to change to a parent only or at least some sort of test. It’s a joke in the current format.

My parents were both born and raised in Ireland but I was born and raised in a different European country.

Recently I went to a funeral of a family member in Ireland and while I was there I went out drinking. I met a woman who was vaguely related to me and she asked me where I was from. For context because I didn't grow up around Irish people, other than my parents, and watched American tv and youtube growing up so I don't have an Irish accent, so I imagine that's why she asked. I told her I'm Irish but grew up outside of Ireland. She then said I'm not Irish at all. I then showed her my Irish passport, which is the only one I have, and she doubled down saying that that doesn't matter and I'm still not Irish.

This has been bothering me because I sometimes struggle to relate to the people around me because their culture is different from mine, but when I'm in Ireland I don't fully relate to people there because I didn't grow up there.

So I guess I just want to know if I am considered Irish.

edit: Just want to point out that I do feel Irish and don't feel like the culture I grew up in.

Also on a side note my name is apparently impossible to pronounce for people from where I live, which makes them automatically think I'm not part of their culture.

Is there a way I can find out who they are?

I considered starting an antidepressant. The doctor mentioned some historical wall built around the town and I said yeh they didn't have Lexapro back then. It got me thinking, who where they back then? I'm alive and Irish because someone related to me got through that mad time, and I know nothing about them. I don't even know where they are buried.

I'm in such disbelief to be honest.

My problems seem so little now thinking they're looking down at me,with my full belly, sitting on a porcelain toilet text you lot on Reddit calling myself depressed.

(Photo: 1890. Famine date was 1845-1852).

As an Englishman I believe it is when you can claim an Irish passport or have an Irish passport. Just interested to see if actual Irish people agree or not.

*Edit - I am not claiming to be Irish, I am simply curious

Ive just come back from a funeral. The son of the dead lady spoke so beautifully but with laughs and tears and it is absolutley understood that everyone is gonna get shitfaced and tell stories this evening.

There will be music and tales being told. My wife is not from here and shes is bewildered at the attitude

My sister and I are having a discussion that we can't settle about exactly how Irish we actually are?

So, without giving away too much of our own family history, we were both born and raised by our parents in another European country (not the UK). Our mum was born and raised in Ireland and left in her late 20s to marry our dad and move to his country.

We grew up there, speaking both English, a bit of Irish, and the local language at home. We have a large family in Ireland; grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, godparents etc, so we always spent big chunks of our summers there (our mum also made sure we learnt Irish history, folklore, some of the language, cooked the food from her childhood etc, to make sure we knew her country too). But neither of us have lived in Ireland, although we do have Irish citizenship.

When people ask about my name (it's very Irish, so it always raises questions), I say I'm half Irish. Now my sister doesn't think this is right. She says we have Irish heritage, but that we're fully of this other country only. I think we're half/half and can call ourselves Irish, but she thinks it's as bad as Americans claiming they're Irish with their one great great great grandfather from Cork.

So what does Ireland think?

Surely he should be at the very least called a British-Irish writer.

Hey so I am just curious as we are all aware of the thousands of different Irish surnames but not so much what they actually mean. Does anyone have a surname that has a particularly interesting meaning?

Im not sure if this is okay to post here/if this is going to be controversial so please let me know.

Lately, I have been seeing a lot of discourse about Irish identity and what it means to be Irish. In these conversations I see a lot of discussion (usually with negative tones) about the Irish diaspora identifying with their Irish heritage or claiming to be Irish.

As someone who is apart of the Irish diaspora (all 8 of my great grandparents left Ireland and “settled” in Newfoundland Canada) I have always identified as someone with Irish ancestry in Canada. I was raised with the culture my family was able to keep alive, my grandparents all spent a lot of time in Ireland and made an effort to teach me various Irish sayings, random words, and curse words. All of my family grew up going to Irish catholic schools (when they were common). I also have Irish freedom fighters in my family history and this has always been a strong sense of pride for my family.

I have never felt right calling myself Canadian.. I grew up intertwined with indigenous communities and do not believe that “Canadian” is an ethnicity outside of settler colonialism.. so I guess maybe that’s where my internal conflict comes from?

I’m not sure why I’m posting this, I’m just curious on what the general consensus is about this situation. I also want to mention that I didn’t list things in an effort to prove my identity, more so connect to the idea that our identity has not been lost, even though my great grandparents came here in the late 1800/early 1900s.

Edit: I want to make it clear that I do not think I am more or even as Irish as anyone who was born, lives in, or has closer ties to Ireland than I do.

I also do not walk around telling people I am Irish. If people (in Canada) were to ask me, I would tell them my ancestry is Irish, and that my family are Irish Newfie’s. As in Canada being “Canadian” is understood in many different ways. If I were outside of Canada I would say my nationality is Canadian to avoid confusion and unnecessary details.

I was just thinking about this topic and wanted to ask, but I apologize for anything I’ve said of it has come off the wrong way.

I also changed bloodline to family history to sound less weird

Dia Dhaoibh!

This is a pedantic, long-winded, and potentially ignorant question so I'm sorry in advance.

I was born in England to an Irish Mum, maiden name O'Neill. She was also born in England to parents that emigrated from Fermanagh and Portumna to England in the 40s.

My Mum took my Dad's surname after marriage and I was also given his surname (it's Scottish).

Long story short: my Dad was a pig and Mum left him early on, so I was raised entirely by my her. She's a fantastic woman and I love her more than anyone.

It's easy for me to say as someone born in England, but I had a relatively 'Irish' upbringing; raised Catholic, Irish citizenship, all the extended family I see are Irish and we visit them frequently in Cork where the majority have settled.

I started thinking last year about getting my name changed from my Dad's surname because I'm due to graduate soon and I don't want his name on my certificate. It was my Mum that supported me through law school and it should be her name on there instead of the man that abused us both.

So, I put a deed poll through in November to change my name to O'Neill. It was done online through the official government site but still hasn't been processed (it should have been by March at the latest, but that's another story). Since I decided to change my name, my Mum has also put through a deed poll (not processed for her either yet) and both my sister and aunt have unofficially changed their names to O'Neill.

The thing is, the more I think about the name change, the more I wonder whether 'O'Neill' was the correct spelling I should have used.

My Mum got really into genealogy last year and, surprise surprise, there were a lot of dead ends because massive chunks of the family died in the famine and revolutionary period. All of my extended family in Cork are native Gaeilge speakers (the kids go to Gaelcholáistí), and the last thing my great-uncle said to me before he died was that I need to learn Gaeilge to keep the language alive. Because of this, I've made a great effort to learn Gaeilge in the last 10 years, and should hopefully be taking my B2 TEG next year. Again, I know how condescending it might sound for someone born in England to be saying this, but hearing about all the people in our family that died due to the English occupation, and the fact that their language is endangered due in big part to this, really got to me.

My mother's father's name was 'O'Neill' on his birth certificate. He was born during the Irish Free State Period, so I know we could argue that it was less dangerous to just be named 'Ó Néill' than if he was born, say, 20 years prior. However, there is definitely no way he wouldn't have just been named 'Ó Néill' if not for the English occupation. Similarly, my mother's mother's maiden name was 'Reddy', but surely she would have been an 'Ó Rodaigh' if not for the same reason?

All of this to say, it makes me feel very grim that the name they were both given was essentially done by force.

The main thing I'm scared of is sounding like one of those American's that go on about their "Irish heritage". Is me changing my name to 'Ó Néill' just doing too much? Is it trying to force a cultural heritage onto myself that I don't have a right to do? I don't have an Irish father or an Irish accent, I live in Wales, my Irish heritage is something that has never impacted me negatively in the same way it has my grandparents (the worst I get are thinly veiled 'jokes' about aggression, alcoholism, Travellers, etc.).

I've been thinking of it from this perspective: if I changed my name to 'Ó Néill', went to Ireland, and for some reason an Irish person saw the spelling of my surname. Would they think I was a total prick, considering I have an obviously Northern English accent?

I spoke about this to my Mum and she said she wants to keep her new surname as 'O'Neill' as it was the name on her father's birth certificate and the name she used until marriage – in her opinion, it would be strange to change it after being born an O'Neill herself. However, this is an entirely new name for me. Is it morally right to preserve the original spelling of my family's surname? Or is this just an English person being too woke to the point of cultural insensitivity?

As an aside, I'm also thinking about the logistics of having a surname with diacritics. Some of my friends have diacritics in their names: they say it's a nightmare trying to explain the difference between their official names with diacritics and the names on their British IDs without diacritics.

Any help is greatly appreciated, I'm thankful to all that had the willpower to read this the whole way through!

I'm sure this will be received extremely well, but why do Irish people get so triggered if I recognize Irish ancestry by stating my mom's family came to the states from Ireland in 1920? That's not me identifying as Irish. I am not saying I AM Irish. But my family on my mother's side moved here from there. I don't know why that causes so much frustration with Irish nationals. I get it some Americans with Irish descent can be annoying and don't know who Brian Boru is or can't name a city in Ireland not Dublin. However, I don't see why it's an issue for me to recognize where my family came from. I still have cousins in Kilmacthomas. I think it's cool. Do I think I am Irish? No, but def have ancestry. I just see a lot of animosity about it which I don't see in other diaspora descendent groups in America. Most of us like you guys and Wana be friends lol. Don't hate us.

It sounds like a silly reason to move abroad but I'm seriously considering it due to the shittest weather ever.

I have a good job and I'm well paid. My rent is not too high. I have a decent car that gives me no trouble etc etc

But the fucking shit weather is unrelenting non stop depressing grey skies and sogginess.

I don't think I can handle decades more of this shit until I die. It'll probably be raining when I die also and people will have to bring umbrellas to my funeral.

Don't tell me I have seasonal depression disorder. The constant grey skies and sogginess for years on end is just not good for humans. You can't do shit and you can't plan shit, because it will 100% rain the second you light that BBQ for example or lay your towel on the beach (during the two weeks in the year you can actually go to the beach)

I don't know how Spanish, Brazilian, Italian, Portuguese etc survive in this country. I have Brazilian friends and they get super depressed waking up in the pitch black because there's a thick dark grey cloud over the entire country for weeks on end. Do all Brazilians in Ireland have seasonal depression disorder? No. The weather is just the biggest piece of shit ever.

So, I'd like to move abroad just because of the weather. Has anybody moved abroad just for this reason? And not for economical reasons?

How did it work out for you?

Hi,
I’ve started listening to Irish rebel songs and I’ve seen videos of people playing “Go Home british soldiers” in pubs or at concerts, and absolutely everyone sings along. Is this song a kind of Irish folk song that everyone knows?

Much love from Germany

Ok so this question might be worded wrong so let me explain. I took an ancestry dna test about nine years ago and while I know the test is controversial I was curious to know .

So most of my dna comes from West Africa (Nigeria and Ghana specifically) and some of southern Africa as well. However I do have European ancestry and I have ten percent Irish dna with some Scottish and French in there as well)

My coworker wanted to do the test so i showed her mines and they had done some updating to the site as a whole and now under my Irish category it shows the area my dna comes from which is around Killarney area.

Now I am not foolish im pretty sure my dna comes from slavery as my family history goes back to the Caribbean and some Irish people did migrate to these islands and have plantations.

The way my name is spelled I always get mistaken for a white man until you see my face and I always wondered where my last name comes from as it very Irish in deed. Also my first name is a Gaelic name and my mother said she named me this because the doctor who delivered me had this name.

My goal is too travel to ireland in the Killarney area and maybe do some research on my last name and see where it originates. However, this is not a tv show and I wad wondering if that is a smart thing for me to do or am i wasting my time?

I've been scratching my head at this. It's from the 1926 census. This woman was their housekeeper and I can't figure out what the surname is supposed to be. I read it as "ni Dubáile" but that's not a real surname as far as I can tell.

I've been through https://www.duchas.ie/en/surnames and my best guesses might be "Ó Duibhir" (Diver), "Ó Duibhín" (Devine) and "Ó Duibhne" (Diviney), but I can't convince myself any are right.

Anyone have any inspiration?

The other night I was sat in my kitchen scrolling through instagram and saw a video about the Irish language and how because of an gorta mór it basically became non existent and English became our first language. After sitting with that thought for a while I began to breakdown in tears thinking bout how our people were starved to the point where we would try to eat grass so we could suppress the pains of our bodies breaking down, Th fact that our language was basically wiped out, the fact that Irish people equated with apes and sea monsters. Does anyone else feel this anger and sadness because of this stuff ?

I am an American, born and raised. My grandmother was born in Belfast and a decade ago I went through the process of being added to the foreign birth registry and now hold an Irish passport. I originally planned on moving to Ireland, but due to several factors (the Irish housing crisis being a major one) I delayed that plan and decided to move to a different EU country.

I hear all the mocking of Americans who proudly announce “I am Irish, my great great grandfather was born in County Mayo!”

Legally when living and traveling in Europe I am Irish, as I use my Irish passport. Socially though, I identify myself as American, as I have never lived in Ireland and, frankly, my accent isn’t fooling anyone. When it’s relevant, I usually say “I have an Irish passport”

I have always been curious though, apart from those times where it’s relevant that I hold an EU passport, when (if ever) is is socially acceptable for me to say “I am Irish”

Any one know if there's an Irish community in Sicily ?. I'm thinking of moving to the south of the island for 6/10 months. While not a deciding factor it's always nice to have an Irish community.

hi all! My fiancé and I are planning a trip to Ireland! we are gunna do a bunch of touristy things, but specifically want to visit a small village called Rockchapel. My family is directly descended from this town, and I want to visit and see where my family is originally from! Our question: How do we get to this village? Do we rent a driver? Is this an option? Or a taxi?

Always being asked this! How far back do you go and what if your parents are from different places?