Who's yo' daddy, William X. O'Brien?

January 21, 2012 10:55 PM

Does anyone know anything about the Irish trade unionist and politician William X. O'Brien (23 January 1981 - 31 October 1968)? I read that he was born in Clonakilty and, descending from the O'Brien family in that area, I'm curious if he's a relative. I would think it'd be easy to get a little family information on him given his relative prominence, but I haven't turn up much.
posted by Enneking to Society & Culture (1 answer total)

I have no information on William X O'Brian's family but I wanted to point out that if your surname is O'Brian, you probably are related, just not as closely as you might suspect. Virtually all O'Brien's are descended from the Irish king Brian Boru, so that family has been propagating in and around Cork (and the rest of the country and the world) for over 1,000 years. Clontakilty is packed out with O'Briens to this day - accountants, priests, pub landlords, car dealership owners, a cafe, at least one funeral home, etc. Given the sheer number of O'Briens, only a very small proportion are related individually to each other in any close way though they all share a distant forebearer. The tree has well and truly branched, many many times over!
posted by DarlingBri at 11:12 PM on January 21, 2012