Irish states have existed under a number of different names for nearly a thousand years. A unified Irish proto-state had been coalescing from the multitude of small tribal kingdoms that existed circa AD 500, similar to the pattern elsewhere in Europe. The independent development of the several dynastic regional kingdoms into a nascent national kingdom, however, was extinguished by the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, although these regional Gaelic Ireland kingdoms continued to resist for centuries until the Tudor conquest of Ireland was completed in the 17th century.