Naming the North Coast: Antrim and the Glens with Dr. Frances Kane

In this episode, Dr. Frances Kane tells us about the importance of ‘home’, mythical places found on the North Coast, and the linguistic diversity seen in our local place-names.

Transcript

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GD focuses on Check People in Place A podcast series which celebrates the hidden history and linguistic diversity of our local place names here. Throughout the series, which will follow an English-Irish format, renowned place name experts will explore the hidden history of our local place names here in celebrating this unique aspect of our shared heritage. In you attend to how are you goal and Dr. Francis Kainlin. Frances is a lecturer and researcher in the School of Arts, English and Languages in Queen's University Belfast, and has for a number of years been involved with the Northern Ireland Placename Project as a researcher. Frances is particularly interested in exploring place names to see what they can tell us to help understand wider processes of language contact and language change over time.

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The project has been here since 1987. The main aim of the project is to carry out research on Irish place names with a view of finding out their linguistic origin. So a huge part of that involves looking at Irish language forms because the majority of the place names that we use today, the contemporary place names, have their origins in the Irish language, even though they don't really look like that. So a lot of the work involves taking a contemporary Irish language form and looking backwards at how it maybe appeared in different um publications or maps over time to see if we can figure out what the original form of the name was when it was coined in Irish, and then trying to figure out what that meaning was and if there's any relevance of that today. So that's the main um bread and butter work of the project, figuring out the origins of our place names, um, most of which are Irish language in origin, but we also engage with place names that have their origins in other languages. So we have lots of English language place names that have been coined from the 12th and 17th centuries. Uh, we have place names coined by the Vikings, a couple of those that I'll maybe um talk about later on. And then from the 17th century on, we also have evidence of Scots in our place names, so Scots components, sometimes as full Scots names, or sometimes one component of the word can be English or Irish or Scots, or some like some place names are a combination of two or more um languages. So it's really interesting in that way. I think place names are very unique in the value that they hold because not only do we use them every day, you know, if you have an appointment, you stick in the name of a street um and into Google Maps and it'll take you where you need to go. Um, so we all need place names to send letters and send Christmas cards and tell people where we are, where we're living, or where we're going. But in a historical sense, they're very much relics of the past. Um, they tell us about um the world or the land around us, they tell us about our places and what they would have perhaps looked like before, um, the physical features that were prominent in the time, um, the people that were really prominent in the areas at the time. And they also tell us about how our predecessors saw the world around them, um, in the way that they describe their places that made it into the names. The interesting things about our place names is that they can't be attributed to one source. Um, the fact that different populations have inhabited this island over time, um, they have come with their respective language varieties and language dialects that all have um contributed to the names that we use today. So, as I said, the majority of our place names were coined when Ireland was Irish-speaking, so Ireland was totally Irish-speaking until the 17th century. Um, so most of the names that we use today, you know, Castlewell and Balomina, those types of names that just roll off the tongue without even thinking, they're actually of Irish language origin. But because they were coined in Irish and we're obviously speaking English today, um the original meaning doesn't transfer through. Um, most of the Irish language names were recorded in Anglicised spelling, and the spellings have changed, the pronunciations have changed. Um, and even to uh an Irish speaker today, they may not um immediately be aware of their origin of the name because they've been obscured through the passage of time and the passage from one language into another. So I guess that's why we need to have uh uh this these types of conversations to inform people about where these names are, where they come from. You know, what is a ballet, what is a knock, what is what is male, what is boy in a name. And with actually quite little um knowledge, you can interpret quite a lot of place names. It's really the case of the place names being a linguistic pick and mix. You know, it's not the case that we have Irish names, English names, Scots names, Viking names, we have some French names. Um, but the way that language works and the way that people use language means that the names get mixed up over time. So I already mentioned at the very start the fact that most Irish language place names become Anglicised, so they they kind of conform to English pronunciation and English spelling. That's what the way the vast majority of our Irish place names have been brought into the English language. But some of them have actually been um translated. So the likes of Newcastle come from Cathline New. So while it looks like Newcastle is an English name, if we go back further enough, we might find an Irish language version of that name. Um so names kind of near the start of the Causeway coastal route, such as um Newton Abbey, White Abbey, um, Green Island, and Whitehead, look like English names, and they absolutely are English names. But for the case of White Abbey, there is evidence that it came from um the Irish name Monasterin, the White Monastery, um, but that was just translated um rather than being coined as an English name. Now White Abbey um and a number of other smaller place names were combined then to make Newton Abbey. So a name like Newton Abbey um is English origin. There was never any Irish language predecessor. So I suppose they don't, the names don't tell us everything, you know, just by their contemporary name, and we do have to bit of digging, do a bit of digging before um or to the forms that existed before the current name. Um so White Abbey is from Manisherin. White Abbey was also referred to at one point um called Drumla Crix or Drumla Croix. For the I don't know if there's any French people that are gonna slate me for my pronunciation of that. Um a hybrid of of um Irish and French, drum being ridge, and croix being the French for cross, so the the ridge of the cross. Um and we other we see other hybrid forms or mixes of place names when we see names like um or we see elements like burn and bray. So burn is a Scots word for a river, um, bray is a Scots word for a hill, but we sometimes see these stuck on to the name of an Irish townland, perhaps that has been anglicised. I suppose an example would be some bali, something bray, which would be the bali would be the bolly component for town land, and then the bray would be stuck on the end. Um one example that I always draw upon when I'm thinking about um language hybrids or place name hybrids is the word is the name of um Burntollet River um in County Derry. So Burn Tollet River is like a three-way hybrid name in that um it has Irish, it has English, and it has Scots. But the interesting thing about the three languages in the name, the three components refer to the same thing. So when we think about um so we have burn tollet river, so we'll start at the bottom and work our way up. So river is the English word for a river. Burn is the Scots word for a river, so we have burn tollet river, but the the Irish component, tollage or tollage, um, is an old word for an abundance or a flooding. So the tollage component of burn tollet river actually means river, it refers to the river. So burn toll river actually translates as river, river, river, if you think about it that way. And that shows, first of all, it shows the significance of the physical features. You know, this place for three different populations of people, this river was significant that they had to give it a name, but also it shows the um, I suppose there was no mutual intelligibility. Um, in that, you know, whenever the English speakers came and saw burn tollet, they said they didn't know that they already referred to the river. So they had um, you know, they took this name and put river on the end, the same as tollet and burn, you know, the the Scots speakers probably didn't know that the tollage component referred to the river, which is why we kind of get these kind of we call it um tautology or repetitions in names. So names like Nocknagoni Hill is Nocknagoni is the hill of the rabbits. Um, it still refers to the hill, but someone who has come along as an English speaker and seen Nocknagoni and seen that it was a hill has called it Nocknagoni Hill. So we see lots of knock something hills or um owen is the Irish word for a river. So we have um a river called the Owen Breedden River, river, but Owen Breden in itself is Owen Vridging, I think. Um so the name river is already in the name, but then someone coming along who doesn't speak Irish, doesn't recognize doesn't recognize that it's already called something river, and it gets river stuck on the end. So we have these really interesting mixes of of names that that maybe refer to the same thing, but just in different languages, but kind of which tells the story of the languages that have inhabited that place. I suppose when we think about the time whenever these names were coined, the landscape around us and nature and um wildlife and all those types of things were probably more relevant in people's lives than they are today. So we see lots of names um of places that refer to hills and mountains and valleys and holes in the ground. Um so we see lots of names like that. Um, and particular names of rivers are um always uh very prominent. And the names of rivers tend to be among the oldest that we have. Um, but in terms of nature, we have um place names that are named after trees and bushes and um various types of animals. Um not the animals that that we would maybe um I suppose maybe, yeah. Native animals, I guess, is the best way to describe it. You know, you'll not see any snakes in place names. Um we could have St. Patrick to thank for that, but native animals, and I suppose animals as well that would have formed part of the landscape that don't anymore. So we see lots of names that are um place names that refer to wolves, and obviously wolves have been extinct in Ireland since the 17th century. So um, yeah, lots of lots of nature and landscape in names. And if we're thinking about the north coast um and the Causeway Coast, a really interesting one is Portmuck. Um so Portmuck comes from, I suppose, the equipment form in Irish, Portmuck, the the port or the harbour of the pigs. Um, and we see tons of pigs in place names, which is reflective of the fact that um pigs were kept in ancient Ireland by almost everybody because um it was easy to look after them, they were cheap to feed, um, they fed them from fruit from the forest, they called it mast. Um, so we have places like killy muck and dairy, which comes from kill namuk, the wood of the pigs. Um, so quite a lot of the time when you see muck in a place name, it refers to a place. Or if we see muckla um or muckley, mucklock is the word for a piggery. So they brought the pigs in in wintertime and they've kept them in these piggeries. So there are names like um brachnamukley in county antrum, um, cornamukla. So bracknamuckley is the speckled land of the piggery, corn amukluck, which is cornamuckla in county arma, is the rind hill of the piggeries, and and knocknamuckli is the hill of the piggery in County Arma. So these names that centered around piggeries, I suppose, again reflects the way people lived back then and the significance of where they kept their pigs in the winter time. Now I might get I might get in trouble with the the Causeway coasters by not pronouncing this properly. It's either Glen Tassey or Glen Tacey, and this second so Glen is obviously the word um Glen comes from Glen in Irish, which is a word for a glen or a valley, um, and they all feature the same element. But the second component in Glen Tassi or Glen Tacey um is a personal name. So Tassi or Tasi was a princess of the Tuhidadan from Rathlin, just uh just off the coast of um Ballycastle. So locally um people accept this as being her Glen, um, this princess. But um the the skeptics among us um have an alternative explanation is that um the tassi component could represent the Irish word tesa or tasa, um apparition, ghost, remains, relics, or ruins, um, or the similar word which um can mean dampness or moistness. Um I think the glen of the princess is a bit nicer, but it may very well be the damp, wet glen, which might be a bit more of an accurate representation of um of the north coast. But that's Glentasi or Glentasi. Um Glensk is uh Glen Shesk. Glen Ann is Glen Ahin, the Glen of the burial chamber. Um, and this um place name might refer to a megalithic cork grave, um, which is known as Clockbreak or Ossian's grave in the townland next door, the town land called Lubitavish. Um, so that's a possible origin of the burial chamber in Glen Ann. Glen Ballyamon is Glen um of the townland of Ballyamon or the Glen of Ballyamon. So Bally Ballyamon, the name itself is from Ballyamon, so Eamon's town land, um, and it's the name of a townland close by. So this um this Eamon character must have been um pretty important that they were able to name the town after him and subsequently the Glen. Glen Corp um is it's the Glen of the Bodies. Um, this may have um origins in perhaps a battle site historically, but we don't have any information about the specifics of that one. But it's it's the Glen of the Bodies. Glen Arath is Glen Arif, the Glen of the Arable Land. Um I'm gonna put a question mark beside this one because this is a name that I'm working on at the minute. So Glen Arath has previously been understood as being Glen Aref, the Glen of the Arable Land. But the Tyneland at the bottom of the Glen Arif is called Forth, uh spelled F-O-R-I-F-F. And I'm I'm keenly explored. Is it maybe is there a connection between the Aref and the Foref of the Tyneland? That maybe that there may be a link between the two names that haven't been um hasn't been explored before. So that's that's one for the next podcast. If I find that out between now and then, I'll maybe have an answer. But I'm I'm not sure if that one is completely um signed off. Um Glencloy is Glenclihe or Clihe, the Glen of the Stone, and then Glen Arm is Glen Arma, the Glen of the Army, um, which might be connected with a 13th-century Norman castle, which used to stand on the opposite side of the river in Glenarm to where the present castle is. Um, but again, we might need to find a time machine to go back and find out the exact origins of the of the people or of the structures referenced in the name. There were a lot of um scenic places on the Causeway Coast um used for the film of Game of Thrones. And if you've ever taken a trip up the Causeway Coast, even on a bad day, it's it's hard to see why they you know they didn't go anywhere else. Or it's supposed it's easy to see why they didn't go anywhere else, and because some of the landscape is really stunning. Um so, in a way, there's a there's an interest in finding out more about these places that we maybe wouldn't have known about before. Um my mom's from Korean and I studied in Korean, so I know a bit about some of the places towards the north of the coast for the likes of Ballantoi. Um is the most northerly point on the Causeway coast route. Um, it's a little harbour town, and it um comes from the Irish Bolyan Tohi, the Thailand of the ruler of the Tooth. Um you might not know what a Tooth is, but the word Tooth is an Irish word that signified um an old petty Irish kingdom, so an old land division. So it was the place where the ruler of that particular tooth probably resided at that time, um, which I think when we're thinking about Game of Thrones, I sometimes think to myself, you know, Game of Thrones was a work of fiction, but if somebody came over here and did take the time, they could probably create an equally impressive um TV series about the legends and the people of the past of here. Um and they could probably start at Ballantoy and figure out who this ruler of the tooth was, or or if they can't figure it out, maybe invent him. Um so that's that's Ballantoy. Um another prominent film uh location on which is further south um on the Causeway coast is Murlock Bay. Um so Murlock is actually um from another another Irish element, um Muirwallog, um, which is actually like a um a mishmash of two names or a um we we call these um like a portmanteau word. So when we can we get two words that are put together to make a new word. So murwolog, um which is the origin of murlock um or murlock in in Irish, is actually a combination of two words. So murr, which is the word for the sea, um, and bullock, which is the word for your belly. So when you think about um murloch being um coming from a combination of two words, sea and belly. So a sea belly, um, it makes sense when we tell you that murwallock or murlock um means sea and let. But I think the name sea belly is nicer than sea and let. But that's that's where murloc comes from. Another one, I suppose, keeping with the theme of of body parts, um, is cushion doll, both cushion doll and cushion dun actually, um, that are quite close to each other on on the um on the Causeway coast. Both um bun and cush or cush um have their origins in the word for a bottom or a base, but the second one of those, cush, um, is the word for a foot. So when you think about the foot of something, you know, we have the same metaphor in English. We can talk about the foot of a mountain or the foot of a hill. Um, in the same way, foot in place names means the bottom or the base. So both um cushion doll and cushion dun contain this element cus or cush when it emerges in its um English language form, and they both refer to the base of a river. So where these two um places are on the east coast um in County Antrim, they are the foot of rivers that run down from the glens into the river. So the foot of the river doll, which is the word um the name of the river, the river doll. And in Cushin Dunn, it's the foot of the river Dunne. Um so Larne is actually a very old name. Um so we talked about the the Tuis and the Petty Kingdoms. So Lorne was not always just um the name for the loch and for the today's you know, port of Lorne, I suppose. Um Lorne is according to legend refers to um an individual called Laher, who was one of the 25 children of Ugna Moore, who was a pre-C Christian king of Ireland. Um, in the early historical period, this place, Laharna, um that is named after Laher, was a subkingdom of Ulster. Um, and it's only recently that the name has been used for the for the parish and towns, so with the administrative kind of divisions of Larne, it previously spread much further. Um so that's that's the history or the story behind the name of Larne, but it's also important to note that Larne also went by other names in in the past. Um so you may have um heard of the names, the coastal names of Carlingford and Strangford, which are Norse in origin. So fjord is the Norse word for a sea inlet, um, so kind of like our sea belly that we had earlier in Murloch. Um, but the um the Norse name for a sea inlet was a fjord. So we have Strangfjord, which was is Strangford, the the strong fjord, and Carlingford, which is uh Carlingfjord, so the um the sea inlet of the hags that may be a reference to um prominent peaks on the way into the loch that um the Vikings would have used for navigation to avoid the shallow waters on the side. But thinking about Lorne, then Lorne was also um a significant place for the Vikings. Um, they spent a lot of time in Larne Loch. There's actually a Viking um grave in Lorne. I haven't managed to dig it out myself. Um, I think the last time I went to Lorne, I was on a driving test. Um, but Larne also previously had a Viking name. So Lorne was previously known as um Ulfricksfjord. So Ulfric was the name of a Viking king um who is possible was possibly killed at Larne. But for a while the the sea in it or the fjord was was named after him. Um there's a Norse historian that says that the King of Ireland, Connor, um, defeated Orkney Vikings at Ulfricsfjord in 1018. So he may well have put an end to Ulfric. Um that's another another one for the for the legends, I suppose. Um so it was known as Ulfrichsfjord, but later in that it was also known as Older Fleet. Um And if you're ever coming through Lorne or spending some time in Lorne, Older Fleet is quite a prominent name in the in the area of Lorne. So there's a castle that is called Older Fleet Castle, and I think there's a bar called the Older Fleet. That not not many people probably know that that was originally the name for Lorne itself. So that's the legend of Lorne. But I'm gonna look back to Game of Thrones at this point because if anybody has seen Game of Thrones, they'll probably remember the grasslands in season five where Daenerys Targaryen was rescued by our dragons. But this scene in Game of Thrones was actually filmed at Benevena, which is further up the coast, kind of um past uh, so I'm thinking we're we've come up the Causeway coast. We're going into kind of County Dairy, past Coal Rain, um, and into the um the shores of the foil. But um Benevina featured in Game of Thrones, but Benevena actually has its own uh real life historical or legendary story. So um Benevina Mountain is six miles long, um, and it forms the western extent of the Andrum Plateau, if there's any geographers tuning in. It was formed 60 million years ago by molten lava. But the name of Benevena actually comes makes or makes a relation to um a personal name, someone called Fovna, so Bin Oivna, um, which emerges in English as Benevina. Um and look and legend says Fovna was son of a legend culture, and he was murdered on Benevena in in pre-Christian times. Um, but his name appeared then as the name of the uh the name Banana. So Ben is a word for for a peak that we also see as Ben, um, in the likes of Ben Nevis. So there's relations um beyond Ireland, I suppose. So that's Benevena, and I think Benevena is a when we think about Game of Thrones being filmed there, I sometimes I think um fact is nicer than fiction in that case, because you know there really was a legend that was that was murdered there. We know that while lots of place names refer to the landscape or to nature or to general conditions over time, sometimes people are important enough that they find their way into the place names. Um, we see both surnames and personal names in place names. Now, when we have a personal name, unless it's someone like Finn and Finn McCool, um, or perhaps the name of a prominent saint, we don't usually have the opportunity to find out who that person was the way we might do when we see the name like um like Bali McNabb, you know, is Bali Vicanaba. Um, it's the surname McNabb that we still hear today. But um in terms of personal names, so yeah, they don't have that many, we don't have that many that we know who they were. Um, and Carrick Fergus is one of those. So Carrick Fergus comes from Carrick Argus, so Fergus's rock. Um, we know where the rock is. So the rock is the rock that has the 12th century Norman castle on it that still stands. Um, but we also know that the place name is probably older than that. Um, there is a story that Carig Fergus is named from well, we know he's it's in it's definitely named from someone called Fergus, but we don't know who he was. Some say he was the son of Urk, the 6th century founder of the um joint Scottish Irish Kingdom of Dalreata, um, who is said to have drowned there, but um we don't have any evidence to that. And it you know, as it stands, it's still it's still a story. Um, I mentioned prominent saints, um, and a saint that is probably most widely associated with Ireland is St. Patrick, obviously. Um, but what we can say about St. about Patrick place names, the likes of Bally Patrick, is Bolia Fodrig, which is Patrick's uh town land. The most Patrick place names in Ireland will refer ultimately to St. Patrick. So while Patrick today is a very common personal name, it only really became common as a personal name that people use to call their children Patrick in about uh the 17th century. Before that, it was seen disrespectful to use the name of Patrick as to name your child. So when we see Patrick in an old place name, it's almost certain that it's a reference to St. Patrick. People are very attached to where they're from, people are attached to place, they find, I think, home and um where you're from, and the you know, very, very much down from your country, down to your town land or your street, the attachment to place is an inherent one to us as individuals and as human beings, you know, you'll always you'll always have a connection to where you were born, where you went to school, you know, where your best childhood memories are. Um, and I think that whenever people are presented with something, some piece of information or some story about their home place that they didn't know about, they have a real kind of attachment to it because they they already have a sense of attachment to the place, but then the story behind that place is automatically relevant to them. Um and I think that's why people really buy into the research on place names. You know, they want to know the names of the places that they're from, that their family are from, that their ancestors are from. Um, and I suppose more importantly, people getting involved in the research themselves and and um finding out more about their place names and in turn passing that information on to us. Because in one way, you know, I can sit in this office with books and a database and old maps around me, but I don't have a pinprick of the information that local people have about their places and about the stories behind their names. So if people want to create links or get involved with the local place names, it's such an easy thing to do. Um, there are tons of resources online, um, websites and blog series, um, podcast series. Um, local libraries are a great source for place name information and place information. And I think above anything, talk to people in localities and talk to your family members um about the places that they're from. And like I said earlier, about people's passion for their places, people will always want to tell the stories of their places that they maybe had passed down over generations. Um, so I think that's how people can can, I suppose, get involved in the in the research process and in the spreading the word about about place names. Um, and I would always encourage people to use your town land name. Um, even if you have a postcode or an error code that will, you know, directly direct you know Amazon to your front door, use your to use your town land name because it it has a value there and encourage others to do that. I think in a contemporary sense as well, the place names are a potentially very powerful tool for building good relations um and I suppose promoting reconciliation in a post-conflict um society where we find ourselves today. Um the place names here and the languages contained within them are indicators of the diverse identities that make up the population today, but also make up made up the population of the past and the the various indigenous languages and non-indigenous languages that were spoken here over time. The place names represent all of these languages. Um we use them every day and they come from where they come from. And I think everybody has an interest in that. The place names are really a mirror of our of the people that live here, um both in the past and now, and the shared nature of the place names and the languages within them are a good indicator of the various languages and people and cultures that have contributed to um, I suppose, the linguistic landscape or the way we see the world spelled out um in front of us today. And I think we should um all celebrate them and and definitely use the indigenous names more.