The Irish people (Irish: Muintir na hÉireann, na hÉireannaigh, na Gaeil) are a Western European ethnic group who originate in Ireland, in north western Europe. People of Irish ethnicity outside of Ireland are common in many western countries, particularly in English-speaking countries. The largest number of people of Irish descent live in the United States -- about ten times more than in Ireland itself.
Descent
Further information: Genetic history of the British Isles and Settlement of Great Britain and Ireland
During the past 9,000 years of inhabitation, Ireland has witnessed many different peoples arrive on its shores. Legendary early arrivals included the Nemedians, the Fomorians, the Firbolgs, and the Tuatha Dé Danann, though with the exception of the Firbolgs, they are now treated as mythical rather than actual human incursions.
The ancient peoples of Ireland—such as the creators of the Ceide Fields and Newgrange—are almost unknown. Neither their languages nor terms they used to describe themselves have survived. As late as the middle centuries of the 1st millennium AD the inhabitants of Ireland did not appear to have a collective name for themselves. Ireland itself was known by a number of different names, including Banba, Scotia, Fódla, Ériu by the islanders, Hibernia and Scotia to the Romans, and Ierne to the Greeks.
Likewise, the terms for people from Ireland—all from Roman sources—in the late Roman era were varied. They included Attacotti, Scoti, and Gael. This last word, derived from the Welsh gwyddel (meaning raiders), was eventually adopted by the Irish for themselves. However, as a term it is on a par with Viking, as it describes an activity (raiding, piracy) and its proponents, not their actual ethnic affiliations.
The term Irish and Ireland is derived from the Érainn, a people who once lived in what is now central and south Munster. Possibly their proximity to overseas trade with western Britain, Gaul and Hispania led to the name of this one people to be applied to the whole island and its inhabitants.
A variety of historical ethnic groups have inhabited the island, including the Airgialla, Fir Ol nEchmacht, Delbhna, Fir Bolg, Érainn, Eóganachta, Mairtine, Conmaicne, Soghain and Ulaid.
One legend states that the Irish were descended from Míl Espáine (coined Milesius, from Latin "Miles Hispaniae", meaning "Soldier of Hispania"). The character is almost certainly a mere personification of a supposed migration by a group or groups from Hispania to Ireland. This legend is the source of the term "Milesian" in reference to the Irish. If this invasion was as large as the mythology would suggest, it would account for the genetic similarity of the Northern Iberian populations and the Irish.
It is thought that the Basque Country and neighbouring regions served as a refuge for palaeolithic humans during the last major glaciation when environments further north were too cold and dry for continuous habitation. When the climate warmed into the present interglacial, populations would have rapidly spread north along the west European coast. Genetically, in terms of Y-chromosomes and Mt-DNA, inhabitants of Britain and Ireland are closely related to the Basques, reflecting their common origin in this refugial area. Basques, along with Irish, show the highest frequency of the Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup R1b in Western Europe; some 95% of native Basque men have this haplogroup. The rest is mainly I and a minimal presence of E3b. The Y-chromosome and MtDNA relationship between Basques and people of Ireland and Wales is of equal ratios than to neighbouring areas of Spain, where similar ethnically "Spanish" people now live in close proximity to the Basques, although this genetic relationship is also very strong among Basques and other Spaniards. In fact, as Stephen Oppenheimer has stated in The Origins of the British (2006), although Basques have been more isolated than other Iberians, they are a population representative of south western Europe. As to the genetic relationship among Basques, Iberians and Britons, he also states (pages 375 and 378):
By far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal), ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales and 93% Castlerea, Ireland. On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipeout theory... ...75-95% of British and Irish (genetic) matches derive from Iberia...Ireland, coastal Wales, and central and west-coast Scotland are almost entirely made up from Iberian founders, while the rest of the non-English parts of the Britain and Ireland have similarly high rates. England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples...
Brian Sykes, in the book based on his genetic research, Blood of the Isles (2006) comes to similar conclusions. Some quotations from the book follow (note that Sykes uses the terms "Celts" and "Picts" to designate the pre-Roman inhabitants of the Isles who spoke Celtic languages and is not referring to the people known as Celts in central Europe).
“ [T]he presence of large numbers of Jasmine’s Oceanic clan ... says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic seaboard north from Iberia, beginning as far back as the early Neolithic and perhaps even before that. ,,,The mere presence of Oceanic Jasmines indicates that this was most definitely a family based settlement rather thatn the sort of male-led invasions of later millennia.
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“ The 'Celts' of Ireland and the Western Isles are not, as far as I can see from the genetic evidence, related to the Celts who spread south and east to Italy, Greece and Turkey from the heartlands of Hallstadt and La Tene...during the first millennium BC...The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or about the same time as farming reached the Isles. (...)
The connection to Spain is also there in the myth of Brutus.... This too may be the faint echo of the same origin myth as the Milesian Irish and the connection to Iberia is almost as strong in the British regions as it is in Ireland. (...)
They [the Picts] are from the same mixture of Iberian and European Mesolithic ancestry that forms the Pictish/Celtic substructure of the Isles.
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“ Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantischromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes...I can find no evidence at all of a large-scale arrival from the heartland of the Celts of central Europe amongst the paternic genetic ancestry of the Isles... can
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The Vikings founded many of the most important towns in Ireland, including Dublin and Cork (earlier native settlements on these sites did not approach the urban nature of the subsequent Norse trading ports), and a hybrid Irish-Norse trading jargon developed called 'Gic-goc.' The arrival of the Normans brought Welsh, Flemish, Normans, Anglo-Saxons and Bretons, most of whom became assimilated into Irish culture and polity by the 15th century, particularly the Welsh-Normans who settled into the Pale area due to the close proximity of Ireland to Wales. The late medieval era saw Scottish gallowglass families of mixed Gaelic-Norse-Pict descent settle, mainly in the north; due to similarities of language and culture they too were assimilated. The Plantations of Ireland and in particular the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century introduced great numbers of Scottish, English as well as French Huguenots as colonists. Despite these divergent backgrounds most of their descendants consider themselves Irish—even where they are aware of such ancestry—mainly due to their lengthy presence in Ireland.
Historically, religion, politics and ethnicity became intertwined in Ireland. Four polls taken between 1989 and 1994 revealed that when asked to state their national identity, over 79% of Northern Ireland Protestants replied "British" or "Ulster" with 3% or less replying "Irish", while over 60% of Northern Ireland Catholics replied "Irish" with 13% or less replying "British" or "Ulster". A survey in 1999 showed that 72% of Northern Ireland Protestants considered themselves "British" and 2% "Irish", with 68% of Northern Ireland Catholics considering themselves "Irish" and 9% "British". The survey also revealed that 78% of Protestants and 48% of all respondents felt "Strongly British", while 77% of Catholics and 35% of all respondents felt "Strongly Irish". 51% of Protestants and 33% of all respondents felt "Not at all Irish", while 62% of Catholics and 28% of all respondents felt "Not at all British".
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