Your Irish surname is a set of coordinates. It tells you which province your people ruled or served, which lord they followed, and whether your blood is old Gaelic, Viking, or Norman. In this documentary we read the map of Ireland province by province — the Gaelic west of the O'Connors and the pirate queen, the doomed northern kingdom of the O'Neills and O'Donnells, the southern land of Brian Boru, the eastern fault line of the Murphys and the Byrnes, the Norman names that turned Irish, and the Viking coast that built Ireland's first cities — and trace dozens of surnames back to the exact ground they grew out of. One surname on this map belonged to a pirate queen who stood before Queen Elizabeth and refused to bow. One region had its entire native population driven west at swordpoint. And some of the most Irish names of all — Fitzgerald, Burke, Butler — are not Gaelic at all. They came ashore as invaders.

Drop your surname in the comments and I'll tell you which corner of Ireland it came from.

Trace your own family right now — go to https://dnaorigin.org and just type in your surname. It researches the name for you and hands back the full story: the province it came from, the meaning behind it, whether your blood is Gaelic, Norman, or Norse, and the people who carried it before you.