DUBLIN: US President Barack Obama said on Monday that he felt “at home” in Ireland as a crowd of euphoric Dubliners embraced him as a homecoming son of the Emerald Isle.

“My name is Barack Obama of the Moneygall Obamas,” the US president told a 20,000-strong crowd in central Dublin.

“We come to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere along the way.

“We feel very much at home here,” said Obama, with his wife Michelle at his side.

“I feel even more at home after that pint I had -- I feel even warmer.”

He had earlier sampled a pint of Guinness in a pub in Moneygall, a village in the heart of Ireland from where his great-great-great grandfather Falmouth Kearney had left to start to a new life in the United States in 1850.

The visit to Ireland is the first stop on Obama's week-long European tour which will also take in Britain, a G8 summit in France and Poland.