Do some Irish names come from Spanish Armada survivors?

[Sampiro]

@santosvega

The brilliant fiddle player from the group Teada is named Oisin Mac Diarmada. Does anyone have any insight or speculation as to the origin of that name? I’ve always been curious.

My surname, which sounds absolutely nothing like Diarmada, is one of several that’s derived from it. The most common derivations are along the lines of (Mc)Dermot(t). The corruption of Gaelic names is interesting to me.
On another note, I’m guessing- nothing to back this up though I’m sure there are studies- that there’s a lot more Irish blood in Spanish veins than there is Spanish blood in Irish veins. While people think of the Potato Famine as when the Irish came to America by the shiploads, that was in the late 1840s and before then, largely because of Catholicism, most Irish who fled their homeland for political or financial reasons went to Spain, Italy, and other Catholic countries in Europe. (So did a few who just got drunk at wakes and in trying to find their way home in Limerick somehow wound up in Antwerp and just decided they liked it there.)

[Wendell_Wagner]

Sampiro, do you have any statistics to back up your claim that more Irish went to Spain, Italy, and other Catholic countries of Europe than to the U.S. during the Potato Famine? If one were to include Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with the U.S., I suspect that considerably more Irish went to these four countries than to the Catholic countries of Europe. I don’t have any definitive statistics myself, but note that the Irish are the second largest ethnic group in the U.S.:

Irish diaspora

And as the article points out, many Irish also went to Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the Caribbean, and South Africa.

[Sampiro]

@Wendell_Wagner

Sampiro, do you have any statistics to back up your claim that more Irish went to Spain, Italy, and other Catholic countries of Europe than to the U.S. during the Potato Famine? If one were to include Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with the U.S., I suspect that considerably more Irish went to these four countries than to the Catholic countries of Europe. I don’t have any definitive statistics myself, but note that the Irish are the second largest ethnic group in the U.S.:

Irish diaspora - Wikipedia

And as the article points out, many Irish also went to Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the Caribbean, and South Africa.

What I wrote, emphases mine.

While people think of the Potato Famine as when the Irish came to America by the shiploads, that was in the late 1840s and before then, largely because of Catholicism, most Irish who** fled **their homeland for political or financial reasons went to Spain, Italy, and other Catholic countries in Europe.

Choppy, but I didn’t claim more went to Spain than the U.S., just that before the Potato Famine more who left willingly went to Catholic countries than to the U.S. and specifically that more Irish probably went to Spain than Spanish went to Ireland. During and after the potato famine there’s no question that more came to the U.S… I’m speaking of times such as those who accompanied and followed the Flight of the Earls and other post Elizabethan and Cromwell era departures from Ireland. I’m also referring to those who left willingly as opposed to being deported (fled implies of one’s own free will, though it may be to save one’s neck). Before the potato famine those who went to Caribbean rarely did so willingly, as manycontemporary historians have observed.)

[Guinastasia]

@dropzone

Oh, and I suspect the OP refers to this column.

Linky no worky.

Do some Irish names come from Spanish Armada survivors?

[celtan]

Celtic language, mores et al were mostly destroyed by the Roman invasion of Galicia, and of Spain in general. To it, add the subsequent catholic zeal against anything that smacked of the old religion.

Even so, many words and customs remain, Mur, for example, means “wall” both in old gaelic and galego, itself a derivative of latin vulgaris. In Galicia Bragas/ Braccae for pants, meiga/meghan for a female healer or witch, etc…

The romans adapted everything they conquered for their own use, and that included incorporating celtic words into latin, such as vetera (from Wit drus, “wise (men) of the elms” and even *Irae *(Ire, from the proverbial celtic fury in battle), etc…

Regarding the mythic appearance of celts, vikings et al: Blue and Green eyes are recessive, and exist as minorities within a larger population of darker colored eyes. Heck, you can even find green and blue eyed people within ethnicities that otherwise look african.

There were tall celts/vikings/ etc…, biut there were also those of smaller heights, just like some were fat, others thin, others were beefy, etc…At least, the bones found in Wyking and Celtic tombs seem to suggest a 5’5’average height., not much according to modern standards. Of course, when you add the stahlhelms and a swinging scaramax, they may have looked 12’ tall to the survivors between the poor half-starved villagers they massacred.

BTW, just as general info: Vikings and Celts coexisted in Spain’s Galicia and Asturias . That area was known to the Vigs (River Pirates) as Jakobsland (The land of George). Incredibly, they left each other in peace, and were supossed to be able to understand each other in the “old” form of celt language.
Go figure…

BTW: Galician cuisine is delicious…

Best

M

@dropzone

Perhaps it is more accurate to claim that the Celts, who colonized Spain and whose kids continued on to colonize Britain, ran out of destinations once they reached Ireland ca1000BC. While the relationships of DNA and crappy cuisine cannot be denied, the Basques, Spanish, and Irish languages do not share a recent common ancestor, which means that a bunch of yahoos from out of town adopted the local tongue when they started farming and marrying the local yokels.

ETA: Who couldn’t cook, either.

[celtan]

Coll and Angulo are also Spanish surnames…

: )

@Captain_Amazing

Costello isn’t Spanish, it’s Anglo-Norman. There was a Norman knight named Jocelyn de Angulo who was given land in Ireland. His descendents got the name “Mac Goisdelbh”-Irish Gaelic for “Son of Jocelyn”, which turned into Costello.

Eamon de Valera was the son of a Cuban father (who’s last name was de Valera or de Valero) and Irish mother (who’s last name was Coll) who met in New York.

Bernardo O’Higgins was the son of Ambrose O’Higgins, who emigrated from Ireland to Spain (and then joined the Spanish imperial service and was sent to Chile) to escape poverty and anti-Catholic discrimination.

[celtan]

That was something that I couldn’t understand at first. Then I remembered that some Irish were sympathetic to the Brits, and actually under their employ. During the Spanish Armada times there were Irish volunteer Coast Patrols under English Officers.

I’m sure similar things happened to the shipwrecked sailors from the subsequent English Armada.

Homo Lupus Homini.

M

@Arkcon

This is pure unadulterated WAG, but I’d heard, I don’t know where, that when sailors from the Spanish Armada washed up in Ireland, many were mercilessly cut down by the local Irish – common enemy notwithstanding, they were foreign military on their clan’s land, and they didn’t get any mercy.

I may have heard it on some random PBS special or History channel program, although it directly conflicts with Cecil’s citations. Did anyone ever hear anything to support that the Irish clans attacked shipwrecked Spanish Armada sailors?

EDIT

Humph, I should read more carefully. Thanks Pushkin: and dropzone:, you guys woouldn’t happen to have citations or sources, would you?

[celtan]

Basques are supossed to be descendants of phoenicians, a people of mediterranean greco-turkish ancestry, and related to the carthaginians.

Celts did intermarry into the Basques, eventually becoming known as “new” Basques (pre-romanic!) , to differentiate them from the “older”, original breed.

In Galicia (The land of (the goddess) Galech), there are many Castros (Stone rings), which is all that remains of the celtic fortificationsof which they once were foundations. One rather large lies is in La Coruna (Crwunnia, land of Crwunnos), it is called Eiravedra, which translates into Old Eira / Place of the elders/ Place of the Druids.

Best

M

@sergeirichard

The relationship between Ireland and Spain is closer than most imagine. Philip II of Spain was once king of Ireland, ruling jointly with his wife Mary of England. Very arguably, on Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s accession to the throne of England, Ireland ought to have remained the possession of Spain - and we would today have King Juan Carlos na hÉireann.

Certainly there is a lot of Spanish blood in Ireland dating back to historical times. Here in Galway, we have a historical monument called the “Spanish Arch”, originally a gateway in the fortifications through which Spanish trading galleons entered the city. The most important trade was in Spanish wines, which were mostly then sold from here to England. Many city buildings are constructed above spacious wine cellars.

So a lot of the Spanish did settle here and intermarry. However it should be noted that the people they were marrying were not native Irish but the descendants of early colonists from England and Wales, who were in turn of predominantly Norman stock - all part of Ireland’s rich ethnic tapestry. Native Irish people were not allowed to roam Galway freely during this period - though the fact that the town needed to enact laws against the adoption of Irish dress, manners and speech would suggest that the colonists were beginning to go native. This is something the Normans were always good at.

Actually Cecil’s swipe disparages one of the outstanding peoples of the medieval period. After all, the Normans conquered England, as well as swathes of France and Italy. They were an astonishingly successful people. The secret of their success appears to be a combination of extreme violence and a willingness to learn from and adapt to the peoples they conquered. The name is a cognate of “Northman” or “Norseman” - in other words, they were Vikings. Vikings who spoke French.

Cecil uncharacteristically errs of course when he calls the Gael “Ireland’s original inhabitants”. While it seems likely that they were the people who brought in what we now call the Irish language (Gaelic), they would have been preceded by other groups of the peoples we now loosely describe as Celtic (possibly more similar to the Welsh) and before that by bronze- and stone-age pioneers. They were followed by (mainly Norwegian) Vikings, by Normans and by English. It is entirely arguable that the Gael had no more significant an impact of the genetic makeup of modern Ireland than any of these other groups. They may, like the English after them, have been essentially a ruling elite. It seems very likely that the largest single contribution to the Irish genepool was donated by the first people to populate the country after the last ice age. These would have been stone age people, the ones who created the mysterious and impressive stone circles and tombs that are still found everywhere in Ireland and north-western Europe.

The Basques may well, as ryand above mentions, be the only people who still speak the language of those pioneers. Theirs bears no apparent relation to any of its neighbors, which we know were brought in by cultural movements mostly within historical times. But I don’t think it’s the case that the Basques populated Ireland - rather that a single group expanded into all western Europe as the last ice age receded. It is in the less accessible parts of Europe - in particular the mountainous Basque country, but to some extent also Ireland - that these traits are less overlaid by later movements. We resemble the Basques genetically (and more anecdotally, we look quite like them) because we share more of those first-generation European genes, having less input from overlaying influxes of Celtic, Roman and Germanic groups.

That’s one theory.

Another is that thanks to the warm gulf stream current, the west of Ireland and the Basque country were bastions where people actually managed to hold out through the last ice age, so we retain some of the genetic makeup of a people who were driven out of Europe a very long time ago. They (we?) survived on grain crops, a diet very low in vitamin D - hence the loss of melanin in our skins and hair, and the fact that I now have sunburn after merely spending a sun-dappled afternoon outdoors…

Good to know I might be able to survive an ice age though.

[John_W.Kennedy]

@celtan

Basques are supossed to be descendants of phoenicians, a people of mediterranean greco-turkish ancestry, and related to the carthaginians.

No, no, and no.

The Phoenicians are the people known as “Canaanites” in the Bible, and are Semites, neither Greek not Turkish. Carthage was a Phoenician colony. And the Basques are not related to any of them, though some individual modern Basques probably have some Phoenician blood, and most Europeans probably have considerable proto-Basque ancestry.

[Wendell_Wagner]

There are more words derived from Celtic in either French or English than there are in Galician (a.k.a. Gallego).

[Captain_Amazing]

@celtan

Coll and Angulo are also Spanish surnames…

: )

Maybe, but this Jocelyn de Angulo was Norman and not Spanish.

[Yssy]

There is a tiny island off the West Coast of Ireland (Kerry) called Valentia. Does anyone know why it is so called? The website doesn’t mention the derivation of the name and although my Grandfather died before I was born family stories tell us he was horrified that there might be a Spanish connection!

[John_W.Kennedy]

“Valentia” is said to be a corruption of “Beal Inse”.

[An_Gadai]

@John_W.Kennedy

“Valentia” is said to be a corruption of “Beal Inse”.

Mouth of the Island?

[John_W.Kennedy]

@An_Gadai

Mouth of the Island?

That’s what they say. (The only Gaelic word I know is “bodhrán”.)

[dropzone]

@Arkcon

Thanks Pushkin: and dropzone:, you guys wouldn’t happen to have citations or sources, would you?

Of course not! Actually, it was the hated redcoats what done most of it, but I’m Irish enough to know what happens to a potential competitor who washes ashore.

Okay, really, the redcoats (did they wear red then?) were all over the place and probably did the arrests and killings. There is little linguistic support for any other story so I, an American of Irish descent who knows what damage we have done over the past few decades, can only toss out phantasms. All historical reports claim the English did the killing. They are welcome to it.

[Scissorjack]

@Wendell_Wagner

If one were to include Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with the U.S., I suspect that considerably more Irish went to these four countries than to the Catholic countries of Europe.

Australia, the US and Canada perhaps, but comparatively few Irish came to New Zealand, at least during the first waves of European settlement here in the 19th Century.