Well, if you're American and you are Caucasian (and heck, even if you aren't), and you look at the numbers of immigrants that came into our country, the Irish (as well as the Germans) have an extremely high number, if not the highest. So it would be pretty difficult to find someone without Irish ancestry after 200 hundred years or so.
Plus if you an American and of Irish decent and take a look at any history resource, you'll see that many immigrants, including the Irish had a hard time of it for, oh, I'd say the first hundred years they were here. Sadly, many ethnicities still have a hard time of it. So to prevail over that would be another thing to celebrate about the culture. I'd say it's just like an African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic-American chosing a name from their background to name their child and honor their culture.
I'm not trying to sell you on Irish names (I prefer Scottish names myself), but I really don't think they are as trendy as you think. Not to mention, English is probably one of the most phonetically DISORGANIZED languages around. Our letter arrangements do not always equal the same sound, which makes it extremely hard to learn, ask any Second-Language English learner. So I think that's an unfair argument, as well.
This message was edited 9/8/2007, 8:13 AM