The single most important item of information for Irish family history research is a precise place of origin, and the most important tool in identifying Irish placenames is the 1851 General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, parishes and Baronies of Ireland.

From here you can search the entire Index, together with street listings from Dublin, Cork and Belfast cities, more than 65,000 entries in all.

Remember you can search for a placename either in the whole of Ireland ("Simple") or confine it to a particular area ("Advanced").

You can also use wildcards:

• % (percent) represents any sequence of letters.
• _ (underscore) represents any individual letter.