Vikings brought first native American to Europe

Saab, interesting.. I'd never heard this term before.

McTag... you are a naughty man, but thank-you for explaining the neighbour thang...lol
Ok, I had to look up most of these people and I'd agree to most of them looking 'typical'.

I'm typical I guess, dark hair, freckles, wide feet... However, I don't know what a potato nose is though. Hope I don't have one of those, doesn't sound appealing.

A potato nose - we have the same expression in Swedish. It is a nose, which is rather broad on the tip, try to imagen a potato covering your nose if it gets really bad like with this man:
who stole something out of a car in Malmö, and got caught on a film and was recognized because of his "potato nose"
The little bit I can see of your nose - looks like it is normal size.

Usually, the men have potato noses while the women have elegant noses, as do these sisters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5rVgxmekeM

Ted Kennedy, Irish face.

There was a TV programme here last night about JFK and modern politics.

I thought Jackie Kennedy could have been Irish, with cheekbones like that.
So the "look" is not conclusive, but it's a good guide.

Feargal Sharkey. Jimmy Cricket. Frank Carson....recognisable Irish types, all different.

Eventually, when you have listed a sufficient number of "Irish types" which are all different, you will have beggared your own argument. Essentially, you will eventually reach a saturation point at which all you will be offering is classic European white boy types, who could be alleged to by any "national type."

That's my point. I said the Czech descended man looked like my brother-in-law: round face, potato nose, blue eyes and dishwater blonde hair.

I've been asked if I am French and if I have Asian blood. I am Polish and Irish with a bit of Hungarian and Austrian (although the last two are suspect).

The funny thing is that most of the early people -- Bronze Age, Iron Age -- who occupied what is now France were Celts. The Poles were constantly over run by the Tartars, so, in the abstract, I could be both "French" and "Asian."

That old song "Soon, Everybody Gonna Be All Mixed Up" has been true for a long time.

Disagree. I'm not taking it that far, merely naming people who, to me at least, are strongly of a type which I recognise as Irish. There are about four, to my way of thinking.

And all i'm saying is that facial types like those can be found in most and perhaps all European nations.

Agreed; however, since certain facial types have a predominance in certain countries, or people whose ancestors originally hailed from certain countries, then can that facial type be designated as correlating to a specific country? The old expression, "He has the face of Ireland," must have had some meaning to be used to designate someone that had ancestors from Ireland.

Needless to say, that image, that supposedly reflected Ireland, reflects a mixing of a number of peoples. Yet, a common enough "look," in the recent past, that one could pick it out of a crowd.

As one moves west of the Hudson River, this may not be as discernible, since people then may have many ethnicities in their lineage. But, in the tri-state area there is still a look that one can find in many people of Irish descent. That is changing as inter-marriage between groups continues.

And looks that are considered "Irish" must have something to do with all the young ladies hairstyles of "ringlets" for step-dancing recitals?

Not necessarily--in fact, it would most likely mean that someone had simply declared that someone had facial features characteristic of the Irish--that wouldn't mean it were true. In such matters which are not subject to measurement, people most often resort to the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances. Were they to enquire and be told the individual indeed had Irish antecedents, they'd say: "See, i told you so, i can always tell." On any occasion upon which they were proven wrong, they simply put it out of their mind. You've got nothing here that can be proven.

Because it seems that you don't often grasp the obvious, i had passed over that step dancing stupidity in silence. You should, too.

Nor do I want to prove anything other than the reality that the stereotypes that you do not subscribe to have been used for several generations by many of the tri-state inhabitants to feel who they can, or cannot relate to, as the case may be. In line with your thinking, I have noticed that some of the Ukranian/Russian immigrants have a "look" that in the 1950's would have pegged them as Irish by many (those immigrants were still behind the Iron Curtain). So, fair-haired, ruddy complected people get me to wax nostalgic about a NYC when most of the police seemed to be six feet or taller, the fireman often had reddish moustaches, and the engineer of the subway train may have actually worn striped overalls as though he was the engineer on the Union Pacific. No wonder the city worked so well then.

The point being, I thought, was that the Celts originally had curlier hair (before the Danes), and wearing the hair in ringlets was a source of pride of their historical identity. No?

I'll pass over that in silence, too.

Living in Britain, as I do, may make it easier for me to recognise ethnic types common to these islands.

The Welsh, for example, are for the most part nothing like the English in physical characteristics, or in temperament. And the Irish too have their own "look", and indeed their own outlook.

Maybe we are less of a melting pot than the US; well, undoubtedly we are.

Ha ! ! !

Except, of course, for the Belgae, the Goidelic Kelts, the Brythonic Kelts, the Romans (and the attendant Greeks, and other people from all over the Empire), the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Danes, the Norse, the Normans and other flavors of Frenchmen, and William's Dutchmen, and the Germans who came in the wake of the Georges . . . yer crackin' me up here, McT!

I am of Irish descent--seven of eight great grandparents either of Irish descent or Irish immigrants, and the eighth a Scot--and i grew up in an Irish Catholic community--very small, to be sure, but more than just a single family. I have also visited Ireland more than once, and lived there for a time, illegally, until i was politely deported. I doubt that you have any more experience of the Irish than have i. I submit that you imagine these types, and never feel contradicted because if you see someone is not of the "type," but who actually happens to be Irish or of Irish descent, you immediately do not run up to them to ask them, and therefore never cure your ignorance.

One of the thickest Norn Iron accents i ever heard came from the lips of a very dark black man, who was a native of Ireland.

Ha yerself.

Never mind how or when they got there, they're there.

You'll be after tellin' me next that there's no such thing as Irish culture, literature, music; discrete, distinctive.

May the banshee twist yer balls in her scaly hand.

Well, i understand the Banshee to be possessed of a hellish voice, but i've never heard that she had an unpleasant skin condition. The creature . . . away with ye . . .

I had Swedish friend whose father was the mayor of Stockholm, said that there is enough mixing with the Finns to be Swedish. The Finns speak both Swedish and Finnish. Finns, Hungarians and Estonians are from the same ethnic group as their language is the same. Anyway most people consider Finland to be Scandinavian.