The above is the longest place name in Ireland, and is obviously quite a mouthful. It’s an Anglicisation of the original Gaelic name Muiceneach idir Dhá Sháile, which, as you all know, means “pig-shaped hill between two seas.” Most modern placenames in Ireland are similar Anglicisations. For example, many Irish towns begin with Bally- or Balli-, coming from the Irish word Baile (town) being part of the original name. A town like Ballycastle would have originally been name Baile an Chaislean (town of the castle).
Such Anglicisation can lead to redundancy. This is often the case with rivers, as many of them begin with Owen-, from the Irish word abhainn, meaning river. So Abhainn Buí, meaning the Yellow River, was translated to the River Owenboy.
Some pretty ordinary sounding placenames have such origins, but some can be a bit of a mouthful due to some clumsy translation:
Dublin: an easy one, from Dubh Linn (Black pool, referring to tidal waters in the area), though the official Irish name is Baile Átha Cliath (town of the forded rushes)
Stradbally: a small town in Co. Laois, whose names comes from An Sráidbhaile, meaning the village/one-street town. So the name of this village means… village. Quite appropriate really.
The Knockmealdown Mountains: the name of this mountain sounds like what a toddler throwing a tantrum at breakfast might do, but in fact comes from Cnoc Mhaoildhomnaigh, meaning Muldowney’s (an old Irish surname) Hill. Not sure how poor old Muldowney felt about the change.
Newtwopothouse: The name of this village in Co. Cork isn’t an Anglicisation. In the area in the 18th century there was an inn known as The Two-Pot House Inn. When a crossroads was built nearby, it became known as Two-Pot House, after the inn. But in the 19th century, another crossroads was built nearby, which was also known as Two-Pot House. To avoid confusion, this new crossroads was referred to as New Two-Pot House, as was the village that grew up around it.
While it can be easy to scoff at such translations, as I have just done, and hold them up as examples of the English-language clumsily distorting the words of another language to fit it, I think that would be unfair. First of all, their combined British and Irish etymology reflect that Ireland is an English-speaking country, with only about 3% of the population speaking the country’s first official language with any degree of competence. The fact is that many Irish people would struggle with the pronunciations of Irish placenames. And second, tourism is an important industry in Ireland, and tourists need to have some ability to be able to pronounce the names of the places they want to visit. That being said, even as an Anglicisation, with Muckanaghederdauhaulia they’re on their own!
If there’s not a song about Muckanaghederdauhaulia, you should write one! “When first I saw Muckanaghederdauhaulia” or the like.
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Definitely, it could take up a whole line in the chorus!
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Do you also speak Irish?
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I do, though I’m not quite fluent. It’s a mandatory subject here in primary and secondary school (except for immigrants here less than two years), buy most people can speak very little because it’s not taught well, it’s not considered cool, and it’s easier to speak English.
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Hmmm..ic..are there still any Irish monolinguals?
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I don’t think so. There might be a few very old people who grew up with Irish and are more comfortable with it. There are also a few thousand people in Irish-speaking areas who use it as their first language, but they’re all bilingual.
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Hmmm…is there any newscast in Irish too? and how about in Northern Ireland?
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We have an Irish-language TV station (which also has a few American programmes) and a radio station which help keep the language alive. In Northern Ireland there are just one or two programmes on the local BBC, as there are very few speakers there.
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Is that similar to Scottish Gaelic?
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Yeah it’s very similar. I have no problem reading Scottish Gaelic but the pronunciation is quite different.
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Ic..ic…
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[…] https://englishlanguagethoughts.com/2016/07/31/muckanaghederdauhaulia/ […]
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[…] is the Irish for village or one-street town. Of course I already mentioned that when I wrote about Muckanaghederdauhaulia, the longest place name in Ireland, which is an anglicisation of Muiceaneach idir Dhá Sháile, […]
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[…] I suspected, it’s an anglicisation, a corruption of Rinn-abhann, which in Irish means the end point of the […]
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