As promised, if a little late, my next blog on the adoption of the first surnames by the Irish. For this blog I have used the wonderful genealogies drawn up by my old history tutor, Professor Francis John Byrne, that appear at the end of his book, Irish Kings and High-Kings.

One of the readers of my Genealogy Blog, Mr Atakan Orkun from Turkey, recently sent me a very interesting e mail. Mr Orkun told me a great story that it was tradition in his family that he was descended from a son of Marshal Patrice MacMahon the nineteenth century French war hero and President of the Third Republic. The Marshal's son was said to have worked as a doctor in Ottoman Europe and married a Bosnian girl Bosnali Gullu, before adopting the Turkish name Dr Jeyan Akif bey. This was an intriguing story so I decided to look into it for Mr Orkun.

As promised to one of the followers of Family History Ireland on facebook, a blog on the famous medieval Connacht family, the O'Kellys of Uí Maine.

On Good Friday 23rd April 1014 a major and very hard fought battle was fought north of the Hiberno-Norse city of Dublin, on the level plain of Clontarf. On one side was King Brian Boru, king of Munster and High-King of Ireland, with the forces of his province and a few allies, and on the other a coalition of Dublin and Leinster rebels with Scandinavian warriors from the islands of Orkney and Man, led by Sigurd Hlodvisson, the jarl of Orkney.