It's a Long Way to Tipperary

It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square!
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.

Yeah, so I was thinking about my given names, and the question of the origin of Fogarty came up. Now, Fogarty Researchers might give me clearer answers.

The family story is that we came from the Tipperary / Galway area during the potato famines and ended up on the West Coast, supporting the gold rushes.

Before that, legend is that we are dark Irish, descended from Moor sailors held for ransom after their ships sank off Eire as Wes Ulm corroborates.

"Fact: The Spanish Armada battle at Gravelines itself was definitely not a titanic naval clash, but a short, inconclusive, rather anticlimactic encounter between two large fleets, both of which committed major blunders and neither of which damaged each other significantly. It’s true that the Spanish Armada caused little damage to the English ships, but then, neither did the English ships cause much harm at all to the Spanish fleet, as discussed in the main text below. It was an unusually ferocious September Atlantic storm as the Spanish vessels were rounding the tip of Ireland, that damaged and/or sank most of the Spanish Armada ships that did not return to port, either directly or in compelling the vessels to beach on the rocky Irish coast. Most of Spain’s casualties from the Spanish Armada invasion resulted when sailors died of or were incapacitated from disease and exposure, not from battle wounds. In any case, most of the Spanish Armada ships did manage to return to port in Spain or Portugal. Many of the lost ships had already been in a state of disrepair, while Philip II’s crucial Atlantic class vessels—the most seaworthy in the Spanish Armada and designed for oceanic traversal, the key to Spain’s New World empire and the newly conquered Philippines archipelago in the Pacific Ocean—returned to the Iberian Peninsula largely intact. In fact, excellent seamanship was displayed by both the English and Spanish sides in their encounter, and it is quite remarkable that the Spaniards did not suffer greater losses considering the unremittingly powerful storm they had encountered."

- Top 10 myths and muddles about the Spanish Armada, history’s most confused and misunderstood battle,” by Wes Ulm, Harvard University personal website, © 2004.

There are several narratives that either support or debunk this theory. Another site says that modern scholarship has not proved or disproved the Spanish Armanda theory:

"When the Spanish Armada sank, several bands of Spanish sailors managed to reach Ireland, where they were stranded. Over time they married into the Irish population, and their descendants, with their darker or blacker hair, eyes, and Spanish complexion, naturally stood out. They were and are called the Black Irish."

Looking at photos of my family I can almost see this, yet we're European in appearance, if not clearly Irish, as we do look quite continential. I am always asked where I am from, probably due to my Deaf accent and dislocated look. I usually say, Noo Zild via Spain, France, England and Ireland and that settles it.

I'd like to know if this is more than just Romance.

Time to look at our whakapapa.