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Celebrating Ulster's Townlands
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| 9. Place Names and Migration |
Dundonald Co. Down: Raven map detail: North Down Heritage Centre. |
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Scottish names also came with the settlers, such as the Gaelic house names Stormont and Rowallane. Stormont was understood by its owner to mean “Storm Mount”, but in Perthshire Gaelic meant “place for crossing the mountains”. Rowallane from Ayrshire means “beautiful promontory” and beauty is still there in the famous Ulster garden. Dundonald Dún Dónaill “Dónall’s fort” outside Belfast seems to have adopted the final -d from the Scottish spelling of Dundonald near Kilmarnock. | |
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The
local name Stye Brae for the
Belfast district of Castlereagh
(“the speckled castle”) means “steep hill”, but it may also
allude to the Scots proverb “Set a stout heart tae a stye brae”,
where the stye brae stands for the challenges of life. The sketch was
sent to a young Scotsman in 1906 as he embarked on his medical career |
Distribution map of Scots place-names in Northern Ireland: Helen Murphy EHS |
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Some
Scots names have become the names of townlands. The most frequent Scots
name is Calhame, from cauld hame “cold home”. It is more common in
Ulster than in Scotland, and occurs as a townland and a minor name,
including Irish-speaking parts of Donegal. Banbridge Council’s recent
sign for Colhem Lane also shows the name in the townland. |
Camowen Road sign; plus townland; Ranelly |
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Scots names, all in Co. Antrim, include Milkyknowes,
Mistyburn, Clatteryknowes, Hurtletoot
and Whistlebare. The word knowe
is also used in the north of England and means “small hill, knoll”,
while clattery probably comes form Scots clarty “muddy, dungy”. The townland called Whappstown is named from the bird called in Scots whaup
“curlew”, while Gowks Hill in Down is
from Scots gowk “cuckoo”. |
Irish place-names in the USA, Pat O' Donnell UAFP.
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Whin rather than gorse is almost universal for that plant in Ulster: it too is the Scots term and there are several Whinny Hills. Glaryford, although not a townland, is a Scots name meaning “muddy ford”, from Scots glaur. The tidal whirlpool called the Routing Wheel in Strangford Lough is from Scots routing which means “roaring” and the Routing Burn forms a boundary in Co. Tyrone. Sliddery Ford in Co. Down is the English or Scots version of the even more expressive Irish Áth na gCloch Beó “ford of the living stones”. |
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The
first map shows the distribution of possibly Scots names recorded on the
Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 map. It
is clear that there are more of these in the north of Northern Ireland
than in Fermanagh or south Armagh and Down, reflecting areas of Scottish
settlement. Many however are Gaelic stream names followed by Scots burn, which, like the words brae
and sheugh, is now
generally used in Ulster English. Ulster
Settlers in the USA took both Scots and Gaelic names along with them,
and the second map shows names from Ireland transplanted to the
Americas. While
many towns, villages and smaller landscape features in Ulster have
English language and in some cases Scots names, most townland names are
Gaelic in origin.
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Sketch 1906 of the "Stye Brae" to be climbed by a young medical student: Mary Muhr |
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Scots names on LGD townland index map 6, 1974 |
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