Who Are the Closest Genetic Relatives of the Irish? Today, people living in the north of Spain in the region known as the Basque Country share many DNA traits with the Irish. However, the Irish also share their DNA to a large extent with the people of Britain, especially the Scottish and Welsh.
Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts, and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country's western and northern fringes.
Modern Irish are the population most genetically similar to the Bronze Age remains, followed by Scottish and Welsh, and share more DNA with the three Bronze Age men from Rathlin Island than with the earlier Ballynahatty Neolithic woman.
The researchers expected to see differences from south to north and from east to west, similar to how lineages are organized in Europe and the U.K. more broadly. But in Ireland, genetic signatures are clustered very strongly with the four ancient kingdoms of Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster.
The Irish have Viking and Norman ancestry in similar proportions to the English. A comprehensive DNA map of the Irish has for the first time revealed lasting contributions from British, Scandinavian, and French invasions.
If we are speaking ethnically, the closest people to a Viking in modern-day terms would be the Danish, Norwegians, Swedish, and Icelandic people.
Scotland and Ireland are close neighbours, and it is no surprise that commercial ancestral Y-DNA testing and the resulting hundreds of Y-DNA Case Studies conducted at Scottish and Irish Origenes have revealed lots of shared ancestry among males with Scottish or Irish origins.
At the 2021 Australian census, 2,410,833 residents identified themselves as having Irish ancestry either alone or in combination with another ancestry. This nominated ancestry was third behind English and Australian in terms of the largest number of responses and represents 9.5% of the total population of Australia.
Irish ethnicity developed from multiple groups such as the Gaelic Celts and the Anglo-Normans, which included the English, the Vikings, and the French.
For the most part, the Irish ethnicity is Gaelic, a group of ethnolinguistic Celtic families. However, the island was also influenced by Romans, as well as invaded by the Vikings, the English, and a Viking-English-French mixture called the Normans.
The Irish are a northwest European ethnic group who originated in Ireland. People of Irish ethnicity outside of Ireland are common in many western, especially commonwealth and North American, countries.
Members of the ancient Irish elite practiced first-degree incest, archaeologists and geneticists analyzing genetic material from a series of Neolithic tombs have discovered.
While people from Ireland, Britain, or Scotland tend to be genetically similar, genetic clusters show that even within countries, there are distinct regional differences, and this update captures some of that.
She said the hunter-gatherer Irish not only had dark skin, but also bright blue eyes – a combination rarely seen today. They operated mostly along the coast of the Burren gathering shellfish, and then moving inland to hunt wild boar and gather hazelnuts.
The languages of Wales and Ireland belong to the same family; they are both classed as living Celtic languages, along with Breton and Scottish Gaelic. In Wales and Ireland, it's normal for schoolchildren to be taught their native language as part of the curriculum.
They are the Sidhe (pronounced “shee”) – mystical fairy-like people who supposedly inhabited Ireland prior to the arrival of the Celts (the Milesians). The Tuatha de Dannan are credited with naming Ireland.
The Lebor Gabála tells of Ireland being settled (or "taken") six times by six groups of people: the people of Cessair, the people of Partholón, the people of Nemed, the Fir Bolg, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Milesians.
Travellers are indigenous to Ireland. Although they are present throughout the island, about half live in or near the main cities of Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork. Only a minority of Travellers pursue their traditional crafts and services and retain economic independence in an urban economy.
Indigenous Australians are descendants of the original inhabitants of the Australian continent. Their ancestors are believed to have migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago.
The three largest ancestries in Australia in 2021 were English, Australian and Irish.
Since the early 19th century, people of European descent have formed the majority of the population in Australia. Historically, European immigrants had great influence over Australian culture and society, which resulted in the perception of Australia as a European-derived country.
Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in Great Britain in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric, Brittonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Normans.
The “truest” Celtic bloodlines existing today belong to those from the Scottish Highlands, Perthshire, Northwest Scotland and the descendants of the ancient ruling families in Ireland and Wales.
1 in 4 US adults have Irish ancestors or relatives. That's 25.75% of the adult population of the USA, equating to over 52 million people. 8.23% of US adults suspect they have Irish heritage, that's around 1 in every 12 people.