Irish Italian

Yes, esp in NYC, Boston, Philly & areas in between.

They're both Cathy-lick.

Extremely common.

Yes, Rose.

Yup. Very common.

Well I never in all my life.

I'm that mixture.

Yes. My father is one.

I think it's both 1) Catholic and 2) similar immigrants experiences

OP, also very common on the East Coast is Jewish & Italian, but Jewish & Irish, nearly unheard of.

Growing up in suburban Northeast, it was literally about 90% of the people I knew. Everyone was Irish, Italian or a mix. I always thought that it was a good mix - extroverted social Italians and introverted reserved Irish.

Good insight r10

Yes, it's called the Long Island special. It generally produces very sexy men

Very very common, and in my experience most of them embrace their Italian side more. Some of my Irish/Italian friends have even said negative things about their Irish side, to my face, which, as an Irish American, I've found a bit rude.

Italian + anyone is not uncommon, especially if Catholic. Italians are horny.

Italian-Irish, horse-hung stud plays with two daddies!

I can always count on DL for sweeping generalizations ...

IQ and cynicism of Irish mixed with balls, social savvy and sensuous appreciation of Italians.

As an Irish American, I always considered my people fucked up and ugly. Italians were as close to an exotic, open, mentally health(ier) culture as we had in the suburban Northeast ca. 1970-80s. I then grew up and found Latin culture - more beautiful, open, even less neurotic - and I never looked back. But Italians were my entree into dark skinned men who were extroverted, sexy and unneurotic.

Have not really met this mix very much in California, so a mostly east coast phenomena I'd say. Though come to think of it, rare to meet anyone who identifies as strongly as Italian-American here. It's a more pronounced identity back east it seems.

Yes, I’m Italian-Irish. Raised Catholic, of course.

My New Jersey neighborhood was 1/3 Irish, I/3 Italian, and 1/3 Jewish. My father called it "the Three 'I's," substituting "Israelites" for "Jewish." It was diversity in the 1950s and '60s.

[Quote]Though come to think of it, rare to meet anyone who identifies as strongly as Italian-American here. It's a more pronounced identity back east it seems.

Considering all of the Irish/Italians I've known in my life, I can't think of a single one who seemed more Irish to me than Italian... the Italian genes seem to dominate!

DL's continuing and inexplicable fascination with stereotyping and ethnicity..

They both know how to hate.

^^ Its not stereotyping if its first hand experience.

both dirt poor, very catholic, despised immigrants when they arrived in america: of course they mixed.

[Quote]of course they mixed

But didn't really get along all that well... but their kids all married each other. Very Capulet and Montague I guess!

beautiful italians and beautiful irish really can be stunning, so at least it produced some hot people

oh, and BTW, that Saoirse Ronan movie Brooklyn is all about this, right?

In fact it IS still stereotyping if it's "firsthand experience." In fact it's almost the definition - Generalizing about an entire population based on your limited experience of some of its members. See?

Yes, R29.

for you OP

It's a little hard to hide your Italian side when your surname ends in a vowel.

Yes of course. Sean Penn's mother is 50% irish and 50% Italian, Bradley Cooper father was Irish and mother is Italian, etc...

R17 I don't think the Irish are known for having a high IQ. I think historically they had one of the lowest IQ among incoming immigrants. In any case, every single Irish American man I have known has been full of irrational rage, but not especially smart.

Long Island

New Jersey

R35, luckily they have no interest in you.

New York

New Jersey

I think Rose Byrne & Bobby Cannavale are a good example of a good-looking Irish/Italian couple. (Of course there is some Scottish and Cuban in there too.)

As an Irish girl Bobby is one of my biggest crushes.

I’m Italian-Irish as well. I consider myself a recovering Catholic. The Italian side was stronger -- better food and traditions and more fun. Dark hair and blue/green eyes run in my family. My family is from the east coast originally.

There were plenty of families like that when I was a kid. From the mid 50’s to the early 70’s it was for young urban Catholics an “acceptable” form of mixed marriage - you got someone slightly different from the culture you were raised in (& therefore potentially a bit more interesting) but since they were still Catholic your parents couldn’t really strenuously object.

My aunts who married Protestants in that period got a fair amount of grief from my grandfather - and the ceremony had to take place at the alter rail, not the alter, kids had to be raised Catholic, etc - all that stuff still mattered to people A LOT in the 60’s. Especially in the working / lower middle class.

To be a young Catholic in that era and marry a Jew meant you were in for much more crap from your family & the general neighborhood culture - there were certainly people who did - but they were pretty rare when I was growing up. White / Black mixed marriages were even more scarce - we only knew one family like that back then.

Lots of Irish and Italians in Boston.

How can you forget the Coop?

My first bf was Italian Irish. Chicago born and raised and a great guy with whom to come out. Great body, blond with dark eyes, funny as hell.

His family used to comically drag the "Polack" his father married after divorce.

it sure the fuck is in my town

Nice mix.

Someone mentioned Irish-Jewish mixes being unheard of. While less common, it is the subject of "Abie's Irish Rose" and "Bridget Loves Bernie."

Catholics tend to marry Catholics, even in the South.

wait...what??? Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale are married???! When, how?? was i in a come when it happened?

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

My last boyfriend was an Irish/Italian mix and he had a gorgeous hairy ass, but a strangely nappy,kinky bush.

Yeah, I think they might even have two kids now.

[quote] His family used to comically drag the "Polack" his father married after divorce.

Yes, racism is what Chicagoans do for fun.

R54 I can confirm this. Growing up there it was the most segregated city. Though I don't have much experience with the south.

In my family we pretty much stuck with other Irish people. Italians would have been way too exotic.

Yes. Very.

R48, I thought that was Alec Baldwin.

R22, I probably have met even fewer people who identify strongly as Irish out west here. Little known fact: California is the state with the 3rd highest number of residents of Italian descent, so there is that culture, but it's a lot more subtle than back east.

R54 Polish isn't a race, insipid cretin.

Large cities with the highest percentage of Irish ancestry

Boston, Massachusetts 21.5% Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 14.2% Louisville, Kentucky 13.2% Buffalo, New York 11.23% Nashville, Tennessee 9.8% Kansas City, Missouri 9.66% Raleigh, North Carolina 9.5% Cleveland, Ohio 9.43%

I thought Chicago was actually #1, or at least #2. That's surprising to me that it's so much lower.

One thing I understand historically is that it was a very bad idea to put an Irish priest in a largely Italian parish, and vice versa.

Yes, Nashville trumps Chicago? Or San Francisco?

Italian/Jewish mixes are big in NY too.

r54, that's not "racism." That's Catholicism, which has a recognizable pecking order: Irish > Italian > Polish. The other, smaller populations fit in where they find room, but it's generally Irish at the top, Polish at the bottom. Nobody called it "racism." You kids.

[quote] [R54] Polish isn't a race, insipid cretin.

In Chicago it is.

Big drinkers then?

Irish/Scottish/Italian here

In the movie “Doubt”, Meryl asks if the little black boy has been hit yet. Then she explains to the other naive nun:

“This school serves working class Irish and Italian boys. Someone will hit him”

I just thought that was funny.

The Irish and Italians didn't even like each other. They were at each other's throats for decades. I'm surprised they started mixing and being friendly all of a sudden.

Catholicism gave them common ground in the end.

Their children all went to Catholic school together and became friends and/or started dating.

'Tis I.

Yes, r13, because the Italian side always had/has much better food!

I of course cannot argue that.

An unholy Catholic concoction.

Any Italian Irish Jews here?

People here are saying Jewish/Irish is rare. Ben Stiller-Mother was Irish and father is Jewish.

Bill Maher is Irish/Jewish, too.

Both are way too family oriented.

Yes, common due to shared religion and immigration histories. Both groups came in late 19th century waves and settled in the same urban areas on the east coast. Intermarriage was inevitable.

According to this link, the following are Irish/Jewish:

Matthew Broderick (Jewish mother/Irish father)

Jennifer Connelly (Jewish mother/Irish-Norwegian father)

Alyson Hannigan (Jewish mother/Irish father)

Kevin Kline (Jewish father/Irish mother)

Michael Landon (real name: Eugene Orowitz) (Jewish father/Irish mother)

Daniel Radcliffe (Jewish mother/Irish father)

Irish-Italians, for me, are the most beautiful men in the world. I lived in Boston for some time and it's unbelievable how handsome they are.

It’s a good mix but I wouldn’t classify the Irish as reserved. I’m from Upstate NY, we had at least 5 families on my street of the garlic/galic breed. The bottom half of my street was mostly Jews.

Is there are high population of Italian immigrants in England? Is there a Little Italy/North End section of London or any of the other British cities?

r85 There are a great many Italians in the UK these days, having mostly come for jobs. But the UK has had a substantial Italian population for over a century.

Historically, the Clerkenwell-Farringdon area of London was its Little Italy, but they've mostly dispersed across the city since then. Just like in NYC & elsewhere in America.

Thank you R86. And was it common for the Irish and Italians to marry over there as well?

r87 I don't know for sure, but definitely not the way they did/do in America.

The Irish & Italians (and Jews) emigrated to America in the millions. Their populations in Britain were never as large as that.

R82 “what are we, chopped liver?”

- Goldie Hawn

- Harrison Ford

On the west coast, Italians intermarried with everyone else, especially with fellow Catholics. Few Italians here with both parents of Italian descent... Nancy Pelosi, however, is an example of one, though she is someone people rarely think of when discussing Italian-Americans.

R78 it’s really not rare at all.

I kind of think Irish / Italian is an awful very trashy combo. Think Dina Lohan. Mostly of the deplorable set. A ton in the Island of Lawng and Staten Island.

The ones who tend to marry each other tend to be very provincial Catholics who find that they have a lot in common in their ...provincial Catholicism.

R91 what do you think is a "classy" combo? Just curious.

R91 made me LOL because I think the same thing and didn’t realize I felt that way until I read it.

My MIL was Irish/Dutch/German and said “My grandmother was lace-curtain-Irish, not shanty Irish”

I was not aware there was a lace-curtain Irish category.

Don’t worry, I know I’m no better, being a strange mix of English, Lithuanian, Hungarian and German.

r93 = Euromutt

Irish + Jewish: Ben Stiller (< Jerry Stiller + Anne Meara). Also: J.D. Salinger I think.

Neither one drop or Irish nor Italian blood in my family, so this is all fascinating

CNN: Immigrants: The Irish and Italian love-hate relationship

As moviegoers enjoy "Brooklyn," which is based on the widely praised novel by Colm Tóibín, it's worth noting that the Irish and Italians in Brooklyn and other urban areas had at one time been reviled immigrant groups. And though most of the Irish and Italians in New York were Catholics, they clashed hard as they competed for jobs and housing.

A history of hatred had to be overcome before an Italian boy could bring an Irish girl home to dinner. (Italians were no more welcome in Irish homes). "Brooklyn" catches up to the story in a moment of transition: In the years after World War II, the Irish-Italian rivalry turned often enough to romance and led to a wave of Irish-Italian intermarriage.

It wasn't always that way.

When the Italians began arriving in New York in large numbers in the 1880s, they were willing to work for less money and longer hours than the already established Irish. That led to many a street brawl, and tensions that spilled over into the local Catholic parish, unions, the civil service and, eventually, politics.

Irish-Italian marriage was rare. One study done in the second decade of the 20th century found that the Irish in New York were more likely to marry a German Jew than an Italian...

AND:

Studies have shown that for the Irish and Italians in New York, the church was an especially important factor: In the years following World War II, Italians who married a non-Italian partner nearly always married someone of Irish ancestry. And the Italians who married Irish spouses generally went to Catholic schools and were regular churchgoers.

Italian and Jewish marriages happened too, but it tended to elicit this reaction.

It was just a matter of geography and Catholicism and both cultures placed great emphasis on tradition and family.

Those pope-loving bastards work together to make a hot piece of ass. God bless em.

R90 Pelosis family is originally from the Baltimore area.

R101, ahh, that would explain her double Italian parentage. My own parents are from the east coast, but I'm born and raised in Cal.

John Travolta is Irish Italian and said he identified more with his Irish side. I don't remember where I read that, but I did.

^Which side is the gay side?

R9 I'm Jewish & 1/4 Irish, my cousins are as well, or more as my father's sister married a man also Jewish & Irish. We're British, but I have come to find it is not exceedingly rare in the states. I know two Brooklyn-Park Slope families who are 50/50.

Momma's boys who get drunk! Just great!

I thought the American Kennel Association had outlawed the Italian Irish mix. (Don't blame me, Jay Leno actually made that joke about himself.)

Did he then explain the joke, r107, when the audience failed to get it?

No R108, most of them were not cunts like yourself.

Obviously, r109 hasn't watched much Jay Leno.

Human nature is large and varied, but for your own protection it's worth watching out for the Irish Italian mix. I used to work at the perfect horrible woman who caused nothing but trouble in the workplace. One day she flew into a rage and actually slugged a bicycle messenger making a delivery to our office.

When several of us in management met with her to address this problem, her reply was, "What do you want from me? My mother is Irish and my father Italian. All I know how to do is scream."

There is no effective way to address that. Just be on your guard.

^ Mary Katherine Ippolitto

Dear Lord in Heaven!

Italian/Jews, we refer to them as Pizza Bagels. Cute, right?

I always thought Leno was Italian & Scotch!?

You don't let facts get in the way of a good joke, R115.

R108, I can see Leno's LA audience not really getting that east coast-oriented joke.

Not just east coast. San Fran had the same dynamic.

r91 that's a lot of people in the NYC metro area, not just Irish/Italians. Come to New England, a lot of Irish/Italians and they're just like everyone else.

Bradley Cooper, Zachary Quinto and Chris Evans are all Irish/Italian.

We always called it the recipe for crazy. Results in some striking looking children who are fucking nuts.

Most guys I've fucked with in New York were Irish, Italian or Irish Italian. Very Long Island. Attractive fun combo, especially the dark haired blue eyed ones.

I am doubly blessed - my hubby is Irish/Italian but definitely favors the Italian side - curly hair, deep brown eyes, full lips, light olive complexion. And he is hung. I also have a longtime fuck buddy, Irish/Italian as well but he looks Black Irish, straight black hair, blue eyes and milky white skin. Alas, his endowment is only about half the size of hubby, but I love getting it from him, too.

[quote] Nancy Pelosi, however, is an example of one, though she is someone people rarely think of when discussing Italian-Americans.

Wait, what??! Of course we do.

Irish-Italian couplings were considered mixed marriages when I grew up (50's and 60's) in Irish-American Boston even though everyone involved was at least nominally Catholic, so it wasn't like marrying "outside" the church. An aunt of mine married a divorced Protestant (divorced because the woman he married before heading to the South Pacific in WW2 got knocked up by someone else while he was gone) in the late 1940's and it was like she became invisible in my family for years - she lived less than 10 miles away, had a kid my age, and I might have seen him twice in my life by the time we were in college. She was a lovely woman, but she suffered mightily for her apostasy.

When my sister married a Jew in the 1970's I was surprised to see how accepting my parents had become. Funny how stuff that was an absolute ("You can't do that") fifty or sixty years ago doesn't raise an eyebrow today.

If my Italian side was maternal, I would never tell anyone that I came from vowelini.

Bono once said that the Italians and The Irish are alike except the Italians eat better,dress better and play better soccer than The Irish do. Thank you Mr Irish Proddy Bono .......what an apt observation.

R123 You are a spoiled whore honey! Share some of that big thick sausage with the rest of us. I wonder if your hubby has an Italian/Irish fuck buddy as well?

R105 Irish and Jewish as a marriage combo is rare in The US. Many Irish I've met in The US are not fond of Jews. Irish and Italians got together because of the Catholic connection. They were both exotics to one another even though they shared a religion. The Jews and Italians have similarities(leading to marriages) and later we find out Ashkenazi Jews are related to Italians.

R74 Italians are also horny, have huge cocks and the cleanest assholes. Cleaner than Muslims who shove a hose up their asses to clean their assholes every day.

[quote]Many Irish I've met in The US are not fond of Jews.

Also, everybody else in the US is not fond of Jews.

R41 Bobby is half Cuban and Rose is an Australian of mixed Scottish and Irish descent.

R35 They got that same rap in The UK. However Irish people in Ireland and their ancestors have been better educated since the bad old days. Things have gotten better for them

The important question: do they sauce the pasta in the pot,or at the table? Do they drain the pasta or not? Finally,the most important question of all: do they call it sauce or gravy??

R129 Irish Americans usually aren't very fond of anybody outside their clan. They tend to be a bigoted, deeply angry and right leaning bunch. The writer Andrew O'Hehir wrote an article about this phenomenon , questioning why so many prominent Irish Americans (and not so prominent ones ) happen to be this way. Irish Americans are simply a very unpleasant lot.

R134 Irish people can't cook.

Oh? Is that why they married Italians?

Italian who likes Irish soda bread. My Italian grandmother learned to make it.

Oh my, a terrible combination for sure. A mixture that usually occurs around the Notheastern United States. I find the English (as in Utah) and Latino mixed Italians more desirable. They are usually cool cats.

Irish-Germans are the worst thought.... don't walk, run away from them !!!

R135 They especially don't like Jews. They had a love/hate relationship with Italians. The Irish women loved Italians because they worked hard, were good looking, worked hard and fucked like stallions, So much for their clannishness when it came to The Italians. The Irish women dropped their panties for the Italian guys!

Why the disdain for Irish-German Americans, R138? Are they uneducated? Bigoted? Have no ambition? Poor? Ugly?

I dislike the Irish side of my family. My father's mother was simply the most negative human being who ever lived, and she passed this quality on to at least my father and one of his sisters. I didn't know my father's brother and his other sister very well, as they got the fuck out of town as soon as they possibly could. The influence was poisonous, and my brother and some of my cousins caught it, too.

I have nothing to do with any of them. I resigned mentally from Catholicism in 4th grade, and from the family when I came out.

Irish-English (Protestant, dad had to convert to marry my mom) here, a little German floating around in there too. Catholicism was far more important than nationality to my Irish relatives. One aunt married a Polish guy, the other married an Irish-French mix. My mother's Irish family was definitely white-lace though. When I moved to NYC from the West, and attended my first St. Patrick's Day parade, I was appalled. I never attended another St. Patrick's Day parade in NYC. Loud-mouthed, crude, low-class, crass drunks - "Kiss me, I'm Irish". Green beer, cursing, lots of vomit. YUCK! We were raised to be proud of Ireland as the land of saints and scholars, and the other Irish people we were steered to meet or befriend in school were of the white lace variety as well. Our job was to excel in school and uphold that tradition, with the best possible manners and most beautiful vocabularies. My sibs have married two Germans, a Swede, a Mexican, a Chinese woman, a Pole, and three Irish. (Some were married two or three times). In my generation, almost all of my sibs have at one time or other dated black people and other ethnic minorities. I, as the only gay child in the family, have dated men of nearly every possible ethnicity - EXCEPT Irish. Just not interested.

[quote] I, as the only gay child in the family, have dated men of nearly every possible ethnicity - EXCEPT Irish. Just not interested.

Though I am 62.9% Irish and British on 23andme.com, Ireland is the last place in the world I want to visit.

Charles Emerson Winchester did NOT like the Irish.

R131 Yes but Irish Americans are pathologically Anti-Semitic. Italians and Jews are more similar culturally and genetically than The Irish and Jews. The Italians in Italy and Italian Americans are much less Anti-Semitic. Italian/Jewish intermarriage is far more common than Irish/Jewish marriages.

There was a time when the Irish were very anti-Semitic. That was the time of the radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin, our home-grown Hitler-lite. However, I would say that most of that anti-semitic sentiment subsided after the horrors of WWII drove home to Americans the end result of extreme anti-semitism. But I would agree that culturally, Jews and Italians are much more alike than Jews and the Irish. Both Italian and Jewish cultures are food-oriented, food-centered, and a lot of traditions and rituals surround food preparation and service. (Drain the pasta, anyone? ) Whereas Irish cuisine is terrible, as mentioned above, and there are no traditions and rituals around food preparation. Even corned beef is not a real Irish dish - the Irish would have cooked with bacon (if they had it) not with beef. The Irish subsisted for centuries on oatmeal, potatoes, kale, cabbage, and milk, with the occasional bit of pork or mutton. (YUM). My Irish grandmother adored the Jews that she knew. She worked for a wealthy Jewish family as an Irish immigrant, and they taught her good food preparation, how to set the table in the American fashion, how to entertain. They loved her too, because she was witty and charming.

R146 and of course Irish and WASPs are big drinkers while Jews and italians tend not to be (like you said more about the food).

That said, at least in the East, the Jewish /Irish combo seems pretty common. The women of course being the Irish ones.

[quote]Yes but Irish Americans are pathologically Anti-Semitic.

I only noticed anything anti-Semitic twice in my family, once from my mother's mother, shrieking about my dating Jewish girls (I'm a guy; I was closeted still in 9th grade [1960s]). It turned out my mother had been in love with a Jewish guy when she was in HS, whose parents made him break up with her because she wasn't Jewish.

And then there was my father's brother's wife. Her parents were from Poland. I once heard her shrieking about me when she didn't think I was listening that I "ha(d) a Jewish brain." I was the smartest of all the grandchildren and my mother, her mother, and her cousin would never start talking about my IQ and some test on which I scored extremely high.

Other than that, I never heard a bad word about Jewish people. Never once from my mother or father, even when it seemed as if I might marry a Jewish girl (I was still closeted in college). Our neighborhood was 1/3 Irish, 1/3 Italian, and 1/3 Jewish.

R148 "Never start talking" should be "never stop talking."

I went to college with this gorgeous Irish guy that came from a large, political family from the east coast. A couple of years ago I looked him up on Facebook. He and every one of his 6 siblings who were married, were wed to a fellow Irish man/woman. I don't know why I was so surprised about that. I guess because these days there is always at least a couple of mixtures and these are people in their 30s-40s. Even his second wife was either Irish or a wasp. I don't think anyone who is viewed as an 'outsider' stood a chance on that family. He was a nice guy, looked like a model but very smart.

Irish people unsettle me, I just don't like them. And every dark Irish person I have met has been a psychopath.

R140 Looks wise the people can look better than almost any combo. Grace Kelley was a German-Irish mix. The Irish are considered to be the warmer side whereas The German side is colder.

Irish men are hot when they are the dark haired non-lithe stalky/thick well hung type. Italian men are hot when they're half German OR from the south (built for fucking)

I guess if the dark haired Irish type were to breed with the southern Italian type that would produce a fuckable male specimen.

Many of the Irish-Italian mixes I've known have had serious drinking problems. From the Irish side, obviously.

Linda Cardellini was on Marc Maron's podcast and she said she was Irish Italian. Both are former "white n-word" ethnicities that made the jump to "full white."

Nobody was considered "white" unless they were Anglo back in the old-timey days. Even Germans were thought of as some kind of cro-magnon species.

R155, caucasoid = white, so I guess it was a class thing with the "white n-word"

English people were slaves in the old times days, probably were traded by romans and some Arabians

The Consigliere in The Godfather was Irish / German.

My mom is actually mostly Irish and German (but not Catholic) - and my father is German Jewish. And for some odd reason everyone thinks I’m Dutch. Like I’ve been stopped and asked this question. No idea why.

It’s the sexiest mixture I know

I lived in Boston for a while. Tons of absolutely beautiful Irish-Italian mixed boys there.

However the handsomest man I’ve ever seen is Irish-Puerto Rican- green eyes, slightly olive skin, gorgeous hairy chest.

R153 Stalky?! You must mean stocky.

Some of the best looking males are Cuban American living in the Miami area.

Irish/Cuban/Italian is another hot combo Usually the guys are hung like Cubans and Italians. They have huge fucking cocks.

I've never found an ethnicity to be uniformly hung or unhung.

"[R155], caucasoid = white, so I guess it was a class thing with the "white n-word""

So, it's that easy. No racial social constructs, no appearance-based exclusion. Caucasoid = white. Gotcha. Turks could go anywhere on this planet and everyone would accept them as white. Good to know.