I'm certainly not sounding the way I'm intending to sound. Neither did I mean to imply that the Irish don't have cuisine, which is obviously untrue. But you're right, I just read the book and I didn't bother thinking about what I read. The wording didn't stick out as prejudiced and so I didn't examine the kinds of assumptions it was making. Now I really wish I could remember what the book was called so I could go back through it with that in mind and reevaluate what it actually said. So I guess it isn't all bad I brought it up, because now I will reexamine what I have heard on the subject and what it means. And I apologize again for spreading bad information.

My family had a similar experience with the names. My grandfather and his brother changed their names because they couldn't get jobs because their names were too Jewish. The family kept the new name, so now they all have a name that was pretty much just invented by my grandpa. My last name is also changed but on my Dad's side they just know it was different, they don't know what it was or why it was changed, but it's possible it was for similar reasons, as it also would have been some Jewish sounding name.