Culture
In Newfoundland, the Irish created a distinctive culture through the 18th century that is still evident. Almost all were Catholic. To Newfoundland, the Irish gave the still-familiar family names of southeast Ireland: Wade, McCarthy, O'Rourke, Walsh, Nash, Power, Murphy, Ryan, Griffin, Whelan, O'Brien, Kelly, Hanlon, Neville, Bambrick, Halley, Dillon, Byrne, Lake and FitzGerald. Irish place names are less common, many of the island's more prominent landmarks having already been named by early French and English explorers. Nevertheless, Newfoundland's Ballyhack, Cappahayden, Kilbride, St. Bride's, Port Kirwan, Duntara and Skibbereen all point to Irish antecedents.
Along with traditional names, the Irish brought their native tongue. Many spoke only Irish on arrival (which gave rise to a dialect of the Irish language known as Newfoundland Irish), or distinctive varieties of English. Newfoundland is one of the few places outside Ireland where the Irish language was spoken by a majority of the population as their primary language. Newfoundland is the only place outside Europe with its own distinctive name in the Irish language, Talamh an �isc (Land of the Fish). Elements of material culture � agricultural folkways, vernacular and ecclesiastical architecture, for example � endured to this day, and trace elements remain. But the strange new world of a commercial cod fishery and the presence of so many English transformed their lives; their descendants emerged as fully-fledged Newfoundlanders, a unique culture in modern North America.
Read more about this topic: Irish Newfoundlanders
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