Irish Placenames

[waider]

Many Irish placenames are more-or-less phonetic renditions in English of the original Irish; there are a few commonly recurring words, such as Baile (town), Cnoc (hill), Átha (ford), Béal (mouth, as in river), Cill (church), Dún (fort), Lí(o)s (fairy fort), Droichead (bridge) and Gort (ploughed field). Thus you get Ballina, which is Béal an Átha, or the ford at the mouth of the river; Drogheda, or Droichead Átha, the bridge on the ford; Lismore, being Líos Mór, a large fairy fort, and so on. The further west you go, the more you seem to encounter an endless stream of Ballythis (Bally being the general anglicisation of Baile) or Knockthat (ditto for Cnoc). This is most likely due to the fact that the land to the west being poorer, the English tended to push the Irish in that direction whenever possible (for example, Cromwell's famous threat to the Irish was something along the lines of "Go to Connaught, or go to Hell") so that they could have the good land for themselves, and in that land new towns sprang up with more English names. However, nothing quite matches the further reaches of the west of Ireland, particularly the pockets where Irish is still the native language, and the immediate surrounds of those areas; it's almost as if there's competition to see how many of the "standard" words can be put into an anglicised town name. Thus, you won't be hard pressed to find something along the lines of "The town of the bridge over the mouth of the river by the ford of the fort on the hill of the ploughed field that used be a fairy fort but now has a church", which, by my reckoning, should come out as Ballydrogheadballinadoonknockgortliskill.

If you get there, send me a postcard.

(For a more serious discussion on this topic, try IRISH LOCAL NAMES EXPLAINED. Me, I'm just being a smartarse as usual.)

Comments

[merde.livejournal.com]

i thought it was mostly the Welsh who favored hilariously long names like that. well, and the Germans.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

You see variations on this theme in Scotland, particularly in the naming of hills in the Highlands. The are endless Ben (Bheinn) Deargs ("brown hill" for readers other than Ronan), Ben Mores (Bheinn Mor) ("big hill") and more than a few hills named Bheinn Dearg Mor (you figure it out). In some areas, the Ben becomes a Carn, but the general theme remains.

The languages aren't quite the same, but I reckon you're more than capable of translating important words like Bruichladdich. ;)

[niallm.livejournal.com]

Bonus points for naming two places in Dublin where the English is a semantic translation of the Irish, rather than a phonetic translation.

[lenno-cornish.livejournal.com]

Interesting post! I will take to my memories. Do you know any good free online source of Irish grammar?
I will add you:)