If Irby means settlement of Irish, the Viking orgin. does this mean that this is a name for the Irish,?

Question

i was just wondering if i was from an irish heirtage . my family says yes.

Answer 1

No, as a last name, Irby is of English origin, it is quite possible to have ancestors with that name who lived in Ireland at some time but it is not an Irish name. The"settlement of the Irish" phrase simply means that some Irish people were living in a particular place in the English countryside when the Norsemen arrived there and they perhaps named that place to reflect the nature or origin of those inhabitants. The last name Irby is possibly taken from the name of the place some 400 years or more after the Vikings named it, and even though the place might have been named because Irish people were living there, there is no way of connecting the last name Irby to anyone who may have been one of the original Irish settlers of those areas, by that time, about 400 years later, those areas would also be inhabited by other people in the local population and many of the original inhabitants might have moved on to other places anyway, there is also no way of knowing how many Irish settlers were there either, it was most probably only one or two families, we do not know. Last names began to be adopted during the 13th. and 14th. centuries in England (1200-1300s) so all last names originating in England are now at least 700-800 years old, and people owning those names have since acquired input from a lot of different

"nationalities", meaning that almost everyone has a greatly mixed heritage, and in any case how do you know where your ancestors came from before they became Irish, English, French or German etc.? (DNA testing can give pointers, but not a definitive answer)

Irby  

Last name origin & meaning:

English: habitational name from any of various places in Lincolnshire, Cheshire, and North Yorkshire, named from Old Norse Írabýr ‘settlement of the Irish’. Compare Ireton.

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Ireton  

Last name origins & meanings:

English: habitational name from either of two places in Derbyshire called Ireton, or one in North Yorkshire called Irton. All of these are named from the genitive case of Old Norse Íri ‘Irishmen’ (see Ireland) + tūn ‘enclosure’, ‘settlement’.

English: habitational name from Irton in Cumbria, named from the old river name Irt, which is of uncertain origin, + Old English tūn.

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Ireland  

Last name origin & meaning:

English and Scottish: ethnic name for someone from Ireland, Old English Īraland. The country gets its name from the genitive case of Old English Īras ‘Irishmen’ + land ‘land’. The stem Īr- is taken from the Celtic name for Ireland, Èriu, earlier Everiu. The surname is especially common in Liverpool, England, which has a large Irish population.

Answer 2

One of the biggest misconceptions here is that the origin of a name is the same as your ancestry.  You MAY have Irish lineage... and it may be due to others in your family tree, not necessarily those named Irby.  

One way to check this for YOURSELF is using www.familysearch.org, and browsing the entries.  Many (not all) of these are taken directly from early church registers, not simple opinion.  You will find the name in records all over the world, not just England (or Ireland).  And obviously.. it isn't impossible at all for someone of the name to have been born in England, then moved to Ireland.  

You won't know any of this for certain, without doing your personal research.  This way, you would prove who your Irby ancestor was, and (hopefully) HIS place of origin. Along the way, you might find that John Irby (just to illustrate) was your ancestor in the 1700s, who actually married an Irish woman. Thus, it would be TRUE that their children/family were of Irish background, but it would NOT make Irby an Irish name.

http://rwguide.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

Here is a guide to starting some real research, and finding factual, proven information.  

Please don't confuse your ancestry with where any name comes from.