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The Irish Ancestors map extravaganza continues. This time it's the turn of the Catholic parish maps, long one of the most popular parts of the site, and free to use. The video describes how the originals they're based on came about, illustrating why they need to be treated with caution. The video also gives details of a completely new feature, map overlays of civil and Catholic parishes, showin...

What's "weird"? This entirely subjective rant goes through some of the Irish surnames that have jumped up and poked me in the eye over the past thirty years.

The most common route by which Gaelic Irish surnames came into English was phonetic transcription. Without the "O" or "Mc" prefixes, of course. And sometimes heavily distorted by accents. Some of the most common names are dealt with in this video.

When Irish-language surnames were recorded by English-speakers with some knowledge of the language, the results could be sometime be grotesque mistranslation. This video rants about some of the most egregious examples.

Civil parishes are an essential part of researching Irish ancestors, because they were the geographic divisions used to create state records. We've just finished a major upgrade to the civil parish maps on johngrenham.com, adding zooming, townland names and glorious Technicolor. This video explains how the maps work.

One of the basic obstacles to Irish research is the fact that the Gaelic names of Gaelic-speakers were recorded by English speakers. This video details the most extreme form of mutilation visited on the originals, where completely unrelated English names took their place.

IrishGenealogy.ie is a wonderful site, but there are undocumented peculiarities in the way it searches civil records of births, marriages and deaths. This video gives details and examples.

Irish genealogists' dirty little secret is that some surnames are so numerous and concentrated that they're almost unresearchable. This video names the *!%! Murphys and Kellys.

"Anglo-Irish" can be a very slippery term, especially when applied to surnames. But it's worth persevering. This video follows me trying to persevere.

The Normans arrived in Ireland just as the process of surname acquisition got going among the Gaels, and they joined in with gusto. This video covers s few of the most prominent names.

The Huguenots were Calvinist refugees from Catholic France, who made their way through England and Ireland to North America at the end of the seventeenth century. Plenty stayed behind and so did their surnames.

The Palatines came to Ireland at the start of the 18th century as impoverished refugees from southern Germany. Many simply passed through on their way to North America. But many stayed in Ireland, and their names remain a distinctive part of the ecology of Irish surnames.

First in a series sketching the origins of the most common kinds of Irish surnames

The websites of National repositories can be decent research resources in their own right. This video looks at the Library of Congress site and points out some (underused?) sources.

Websites of National repositories: PRONI

Websites of National repositories: The National Archives of the UK

Websites of National repositories: The National Archives of Ireland

Irish Ancestors: Rant about first names

Irish Ancestors: Civil Deaths maps

Irish Ancestors: Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

Neglected Irish Sources: Loan Fund records

Neglected Irish Sources: The Church of Ireland and the RCB Library

Irish Ancestors:19th Century Census fragments

Neglected sources: Online estate maps

Neglected Irish sources: Betham's Will Abstracts

Irish Ancestors: The tale of Thady Quill

Irish Ancestors: 2.9 cheers for irishgenealogy.ie

Irish Ancestors: 19th century census substitutes

Irish Ancestors: An antidote to Paddywhackery