PLACENAMES
are most numerous in areas in which Irish is, or was
until recently, spoken.
A few dozen Irish placenames can be traced back
almost two millennia to the work of the Alexandrian
geographer Ptolemy, although identifying many of
these with certainty is problematical. Many others
occur in a wide range of documents from early to late
medieval times, but the majority of names are attested
in documents from the later sixteenth century onwards.
The corpus of Irish placenames reflects such things as
natural features, flora and fauna, land divisions, settle-
ment patterns (secular and ecclesiastical), ways of life
and death, land clearance and cultivation, historical
events, and religious and mythological matters, as well
as land ownership (through inclusion of personal and
family names).
The scholarly study of Irish placenames has its roots
in the work of the Ordnance Survey, established in
Ireland in 1824. The Survey’s first superintendent,
Thomas Larcom, had the foresight to employ the young
Kilkenny scholar John O’Donovan to assist with pro-
cessing the thousands of placenames that any scheme to
map the entire country would encounter. O’Donovan—
later joined in the Survey’s Topographical Department
by George Petrie, Eugene O’Curry and others—went
on to become the greatest Irish scholar of the nine-
teenth century. Most of his early scholarly work was
related to the collection and interpretation of tens of
thousands of placenames, many of them to be found
only on the lips of native speakers of Irish, never having
previously been written down. O’Donovan’s pioneer-
ing work on a great range of sources, most of them
lying unpublished in medieval manuscripts, led to his
masterly editions of various Irish texts, most notably
theAnnals of the Four Masters.
Further valuable work on Irish placenames—
though largely based on O’Donovan’s researches—
was done by Patrick Weston Joyce, while early in the
twentieth century Edmund Hogan, SJ, produced his
remarkableOnomasticon Goedelicum, a dictionary of
placenames culled mainly from medieval sources (many
of them still in manuscript). Other noted twentieth-
century contributors to Irish toponymical studies
included Canon Patrick Power on the placenames of
Decies, County Waterford, and of east Cork, Pádraig
Ó Siochfhradha (“An Seabhac”) on those of the barony
of Corkaguiny, County Kerry, Fr. Paul Walsh on
County Westmeath, and Liam Price on the placenames
of County Wicklow.
In 1946 the Irish government established the Irish
Placenames Commission to further scholarly research
into Irish placenames, in order to furnish authoritative
Irish forms for public use. Work commenced on the
names of more than 3,000 postal towns throughout
Ireland, resulting, eventually, in the book Ainmneacha
Gaeilge na mBailte Poist(1969)—later incorporated
in the Gazetteer of Ireland /Gasaitéar na hÉireann
(1989). In 1955, the Commission’s research functions
were transferred to the newly established Placenames’
Branch of the Ordnance Survey, while the Commission
retained an overseeing and advisory role in relation to
the Branch’s activity. The Branch commenced work in
the early 1970s on the names of townlands, on a
county-by-county basis. This led to a book on the
placenames of County Limerick (1991) and bilingual
lists of the townland and other names of six counties
(Limerick, Louth, Waterford, Kilkenny, Monaghan,
and Offaly—with Dublin, Tipperary, and Galway soon
to follow). In 1999 the Placenames’ Branch was
detached from the Ordnance Survey; it now operates
under the Department of Community, Rural and
Gaeltacht Affairs. Meanwhile, in 1987, with British
government funding, the Northern Ireland Place-Name
Project was established in Queen’s University Belfast
to undertake similar work to that of the Placenames’
Branch in relation to the six counties of Northern
Ireland. Part of the fruits of the Project’s researches
was published in seven substantial volumes before offi-
cial funding ceased in 1997. Since then, with alternative
(but much reduced) funding, a smaller staff has con-
tinued the research and produced three further vol-
umes. Valuable work is also being done on the corpus
of earlier Irish placenames by the LOCUS Project
which was established in 1996, with a grant from Toyota
Ireland, Ltd., in the Department of Early and Medi-
eval Irish, University College, Cork. Representing the
initial instalment of a detailed revision of Hogan’s
Onomasticon, the first fascicle of the new Historical
Dictionary of Gaelic Placenamesappeared in 2003.
NOLLAIGÓ MURAÍLEReferences and Further Reading
Andrews, John H. A Paper Landscape: The Ordnance Survey in
Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002.
[Reprint of original Oxford University Press edition, 1975.]
Brainse Logainmneacha na Suirbhéireachta Ordanáis.
Gasaitéar na hÉireann / Gazetteer of Ireland. Dublin: Oifig
an tSoláthair, 1989.
––––––.Liostaí Logainmneacha: Lú/Louth. Dublin: Oifig an
tSoláthair, 1991.
––––––. Liostaí Logainmneacha: Luimneach/Limerick. Dublin:
Oifig an tSoláthair, 1991.
––––––.Liostaí Logainmneacha: Port Láirge/ Waterford. Dublin:
Oifig an tSoláthair, 1991.
––––––.Liostaí Logainmneacha: Cill Chainnigh/Kilkenny.
Dublin: Oifig an tSoláthair, 1993.
––––––.Liostaí Logainmneacha:Uíbh Fhailí/Offaly. Dublin:
Oifig an tSoláthair, 1994.
––––––.Liostaí Logainmneacha: Muineachán/Monaghan. Dublin:
Oifig an tSoláthair, 1996.
Flanagan, Deirdre, and Flanagan, Laurence. Irish Place Names.
Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1994.