Just How Irish is Novato?

Here's a question to add to your St. Patrick's Day celebration: How Irish is our town?

There's a wide variation in Bay Area cities, according to statistics on City-Data.com, but Novato ranks near the top with 15.5 percent of its population having Irish ancestry. In fact, that's No. 1 among all countries of origin listed for Novato residents. After Irish lineage, the local rundown looks like this: German (15.3 percent), English (12.3), Italian (10.8) and French (4.2).

Did you know Petaluma is more Irish than Boston, a city famous for Irish immigrants? Petaluma's population is 18.5 percent Irish ancestry, compared to Boston's 15.8 percent.

Danville and Mill Valley also can out-Irish Boston. Each one is 16.6 percent Irish ancestry. 

San Francisco, host of the West Coast's largest celebration of Irish heritage, the city's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade, has but 8.9 percent Irish-ancestry population. That's still ahead of the Bay Area's largest city, San Jose, which has 6.1 percent, and more than double the region's third-largest city, Oakland, with 4.3 percent.

A Bay Area city that might be expected to boast a large percentage of Irish, Dublin, is 12.0 percent, a figure topped by a number of other Bay Area cities, including Livermore (14.3 percent), Half Moon Bay and San Rafael (both 13.5 percent), Napa (12.7 percent) and Concord (12.5 percent). 

If you're interested in seeing all the statistics, you can check it at City-Data.com — just enter the city and state and then search for the word "Irish."