Thank you, Bill D., for the link to the Irish Identity page and an entertaining afternoon's reading. I now know that my maiden name, Browne, is derived from le Brun, which I already knew, and that the le Bruns came to Ireland during the Norman invasion, which I also knew, but the more places I read it the more I believe it. I didn't know the Bolands (my maternal grandfather's mother's folk) were of Norse descent... now I don't know if this is Norse as in from Scandanavia or Norse as in Scandanavians who settled in Normandy and then came to Ireland during the... oh, never mind. My mother's maiden name was Gilmartin and her mother was MacGuinness... Americanized to McGinnis...I don't know if that means descended from Guiness but according to my son's t-shirt, that would make us descendants of geniuses as Guiness is supposedly Gaelic for genius. ;o) Which I may be spelling wrong. No, that's right - I just checked.

I was also surprised to find my current surname on the site, b/c I thought it was English or German, and when the woman at the Celtic Festival sold my son a 'coat of arms' and told him that was the "Irish" spelling of the name, I asked if she'd tried to sell him a bridge in Brooklyn while she was at it.