The ancestral homeland

And another thing I've been thinking about:

Meath. Remember how I wrote that the 'th' is often shortened to 'd' and it's pronounced 'Meade'? And that's where our last name is originally supposed to have come from.

Well, it was also spelled 'Midhe' in the past, or 'Mídhe' or just plain 'Míd'.

In this case, the 'i' or 'í' is pronounced 'ee' like in Spanish.

Nowadays, in Irish, it's just 'Mí'.

And it just means what it looks like: 'mid', 'middle'. The middle kingdom (yes, we're talking small kingdoms here, were there were many little kings (chieftains, really) and one High King).

Meath is sometimes called 'the royal county' and, in addition to Brú na Bóinne also has the famous sites, as Irish as you can get, of Tara and Kells. It was one of the five kingdoms of medieval Ireland.