Irish (name)

Irish is a given and surname.

Notable people bearing this name include:

Irish language

Irish (Gaeilge), also referred to as Gaelic or Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is spoken as a first language by a small minority of Irish people, and as a second language by a rather larger group. Irish enjoys constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland, and is an officially recognised minority language in Northern Ireland. It is also among the official languages of the European Union. The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island of Ireland.

Irish was the predominant language of the Irish people for most of their recorded history, and they brought it with them to other regions, notably Scotland and the Isle of Man, where through earlier branching from Middle Irish it gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx respectively. It has the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe.

Irish people

The Irish people (Irish: Muintir na hÉireann or Na hÉireannaigh) are a Celtic nation and ethnic group who originate from the island of Ireland and its associated islands. Ireland has been inhabited for about 9,000 years according to archaeological studies (see Prehistoric Ireland). For most of Ireland's recorded history, the Irish have been primarily a Gaelic people (see Gaelic Ireland). Anglo-Normans conquered parts of Ireland in the 12th century, while England's 16th/17th century (re)conquest and colonization of Ireland brought a large number of English and Lowland Scots to parts of the island, most notably Northern Ireland, where they form a separate and distinct ethnic group.

There have been many notable Irish people throughout history. The 6th-century Irish monk and missionary Columbanus is regarded as one of the "fathers of Europe", followed by Kilian of Würzburg and Vergilius of Salzburg. The scientist Robert Boyle is considered the "father of chemistry". Famous Irish explorers include Brendan the Navigator, Robert McClure, Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean. By some accounts, the first European child born in North America had Irish descent on both sides; and an Irishman was the first European to set foot on American soil in Columbus' expedition of 1492.

Field (agriculture)

In agriculture, a field is an area of land, enclosed or otherwise, used for agricultural purposes such as cultivating crops or as a paddock or other enclosure for livestock. A field may also be an area left to lie fallow or as arable land.

Many farms have a field border, usually composed of a strip of shrubs and vegetation, used to provide food and cover necessary for the survival of wildlife. It has been found that these borders may lead to an increased variety of animals and plants in the area, but also in some cases a decreased yield of crops.

Language

In Australian and New Zealand English, any agricultural field may be called a paddock. If stock are grazed there, the space may be called a run, e.g. sheep run; cattle run.

Image gallery

A green field or paddock with Hereford cattle

A green field or paddock with Hereford cattle

A summer field

A summer field

Spring fields with trees, Majorca, Spain, 2004

Spring fields with trees, Majorca, Spain, 2004

Field (computer science)

In computer science, data that has several parts, known as a record, can be divided into fields. Relational databases arrange data as sets of database records, also called rows. Each record consists of several fields; the fields of all records form the columns.

In object-oriented programming, field (also called data member or member variable) is the data encapsulated within a class or object. In the case of a regular field (also called instance variable), for each instance of the object there is an instance variable: for example, an Employee class has a Name field and there is one distinct name per employee. A static field (also called class variable) is one variable, which is shared by all instances.

Fixed length

Fields that contain a fixed number of bits are known as fixed length fields. A four byte field for example may contain a 31 bit binary integer plus a sign bit (32 bits in all). A 30 byte name field may contain a persons name typically padded with blanks at the end. The disadvantage of using fixed length fields is that some part of the field may be wasted but space is still required for the maximum length case. Also, where fields are omitted, padding for the missing fields is still required to maintain fixed start positions within a record for instance.

Field (mathematics)

In mathematics, a field is one of the fundamental algebraic structures used in abstract algebra. It is a nonzero commutative division ring, or equivalently a ring whose nonzero elements form an abelian group under multiplication. As such it is an algebraic structure with notions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division satisfying the appropriate abelian group equations and distributive law. The most commonly used fields are the field of real numbers, the field of complex numbers, and the field of rational numbers, but there are also finite fields, algebraic function fields, algebraic number fields, p-adic fields, and so forth.

Any field may be used as the scalars for a vector space, which is the standard general context for linear algebra. The theory of field extensions (including Galois theory) involves the roots of polynomials with coefficients in a field; among other results, this theory leads to impossibility proofs for the classical problems of angle trisection and squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge, as well as a proof of the Abel–Ruffini theorem on the algebraic insolubility of quintic equations. In modern mathematics, the theory of fields (or field theory) plays an essential role in number theory and algebraic geometry.