Adrians latest book is now published; Surnames of County Galway; The work is published in eight volumes and is available at Charlie Byrnes Bookshop Cornstore, Middle Street Galway, and Kennys Bookshop Liosbán Retail Park, Tuam Road, Galway
Fourteen families from the medieval Irish lower-classes rose to become Galway’s prime merchant families, nicknamed the tribus Galvia in the 1600s.
The families of Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Darcy, Deane, Font, French, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martyn, Morris, Skerrett, have been THE TRIBES OF GALWAY ever since.
Over the course of four centuries, they and their fellow Galwegians survived and even thrived against warlords and sieges, during economic booms and busts, times of plenty, famine, and plague. All within Europe’s most westerly urban settlement. This is their story.
Why are Irish surnames the oldest in Europe? By whom were they created, and for what reasons? How have they changes in the past thousand years?
Irish Surnames: Origins and Development is the first book in decades to address these issues. Outlining events which created them in the 9th-12th centuries, it examines Irish surnames in general plus those of clerical kindreds, Irish Travellers, women, ‘vikings’, Anglo-Irish.
Why surnames originated later in Britain, the pros and cons of genetics, and why the notions of Celticity never related to matters Irish, especially surnames.