I'm an American, and I'm told my ancestry is Irish-Scottish. Yet......?

Question

...I carry the trait for a blood disease that is associated with people from the Mediterranean (thalassemia). Is anyone familiar with the term "Black Irish", and can the thalassemia trait be attributed to this?

Answer 1

I'm Irish-American of the aforementioned O'Rourke's (buagh!) and my grandfather loved telling the story of the wreck of the Spanish Armada on our coasts and how our family sheltered them over the (eventually fatal) objections of the Queen. He believed that the inevitable genetic comingling of these Spaniards into our line was the source of our family's dark features. It was a great story when I was a kid, but I doubt the science will bear it out.

I plan on participating in the Genographic project (https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/ ), so I'll let you know if I find any Spaniards hiding back there.

Answer 2

According to Wiki, anyone can get it, although it's more prevalent in the Mediterranean population. You could just be in that 0.1% European.

The "Black Irish" colouring being from Spaniards is a myth. It's more likely to do with the fact that the people on the West Coast of Ireland were less likely to have German/Nordic blood, and so their colouring was different.

Answer 3

Most Spaniards have light skin, and many are blond and read heads - with blue eyes. The ones who have mixed withTurks may have dark hair, but really the Nordic people were the light haired, fair skined people. The early settlers and nomad of many of these countries, England, France, Spain etc were probably all dark and related. Then another group of Nordics spread their seed.

History shows that Mesopotamia is were human life began and of course that is where all the colours began. Just as in the whitening sheep - you keep breeding the lightest colours until you get pure white, and vice versa. It is that sort of breeding of a large extended families that makes a nation and a race. We are all mixed but have similarities too.

Answer 4

I believe the Black Irish were people who immigrated to Ireland from Spain. They are a mediterranean people.

Answer 5

Type the word, "MELUNGEON" into Google and you will find a rich history of this ancestral group and various websites to look into. Good luck. Melungeons were known a "Black Dutch, Black Irish, Portagee" by many neighbors in the areas where they lived in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky

Answer 6

This question has not been settled yet by scholars, but genetics points to a possible link between the Basques of Spain and eastern Irish (from the immigration of the Celtic stock from northern Spain to Ireland). Hope this helps.

The term Black Irish is a term used by some descendants of Irish emigrants to describe their ancestors. The term is found in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. It refers to the possessing of very dark hair and eyes as opposed to the caricature of Irish people with red or blonde hair and blue eyes, a difference which is possibly due to less Scandinavian or Germanic ancestry being found in people on the west of Ireland [1]. The term is often accompanied by a claim that the darker features are due to Spanish descent.

Origin
Although the term is often accompanied by a claim that the dark features were due to descent from survivors of the Spanish Armada, the genetic contributions of this group were likely to have been insignificant, as most Armada survivors were killed on the beaches, and most of the remainder were able to eventually escape Ireland after a short time. A few Spanish soldiers ended up serving as armed retainers (Gallowglass) for the Irish chiefs O'Rourke, Sorley Boy Macdonnell, and Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, so they might have lived in Ireland long enough to father children, but they were very few in number.

This Armada myth is likely to have been a corruption of the story of the Milesians (not to be confused with the ancient Greek people of the same name), the purported descendants of Míl Espáine (Latin:Spanish soldier), thought to represent Celtic speaking peoples from the northern Iberian peninsula who began to migrate to Ireland and Britain in the 5th Century B.C., the supposed ancestors of the Gaels. New genetic research does show a strong similarity between the Y chromosome of Basque males and Irish males with Gaelic surnames,[2] with a notable difference between the west of Ireland and the east of Ireland, in that those in the west of Ireland have less input from Anglo Saxon and Scandinavian populations (see below).

Other uses
Other explanations of the term "Black Irish" are connected with the immigrations from Ireland resulting from the famous potato famine of 1847 which turned the blighted potatoes black and as a result drove thousands of Irish to America's shore.

The term has also been used to refer to the offspring of Irish and African slaves in the Caribbean, and many Irish surnames can still be found in the region. Montserrat is the Caribbean island with the greatest levels of Irish heritage as it was forcibly settled by the English crown using Irish slaves. These Irish slaves were eventually replaced by West African slaves who took on the names and surnames of the prior inhabitants, much as African slaves in the United States took on the names of their owners.

In the United States, people with Native American or other tan-skinned ancestry may historically have called themselves "Black Irish", "Black Dutch" or "Black German" to explain their coloring.[1]

Answer 7

good question why don't you try typing in (thalassemia)on the net and see what you can find.thats how i was able to find my bone disease osteomyelitis.lol

Answer 8

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a930730.html

It is dubious at best.