Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
As a new nation in 1922, Ireland went on a spree of renaming things. This happened at a county level (Kings County became Offaly, Queen’s County became Laois) and town level (Kingstown reverted to Dun Laoghaire, Queenstown went back to Cobh) – are you sensing a theme here? It also happened with street names, mostly…
This year for Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d take a look at how often Irish people were called Valentine in February. St Valentine was a 3rd century CE Roman martyred clergyman who is also the patron saint of beekeepers and asthma. I didn’t know illnesses could have saints, but there you go! He has an…