Placenames/ Logainmneacha

Logainmneacha agus bhithéagsúlacht - Placenames and Biodiversity

Our fifth and sixth classes commenced a project with the Mary Robinson Centre, Ballina and the University of Galway exploring local placenames and the link to biodiversity.

On the 5th of February, a workshop was facilitated by Dr. Liam Ó'hAisibéil in which he introduced us all to the link between our placenames and biodiversity and/or the built environment. Some of the grandparents of pupils in the class contributed to the workshop by giving us a great insight into the townlands and villages they came from.

Place-names and language

• Place-names around the world come from languages that were, or are spoken, in that place.

• In Ireland, over 90% of all townland names on the island come from Irish (an Ghaeilge).

• The remainder come from English, Norse and a very small number of names from Latin, Norman French and Scots.

• The majority of Irish townland names today are known by their anglicised form i.e., Ballina instead of Béal an Átha; Westport instead of Cathair na Mart; Crossmolina instead of Crois Mhaoilíona.

What can place-names tell us about the landscape?

• They can tell us how people in the past viewed and interacted with the land around them. [topographic]

• Physical features – high ground and low ground, ridges, valleys, rocky ground, grassland or moorland.

• What was growing/could grow in a place? Was the ground wet or boggy or was it dry? Where would you keep livestock? Where could you hunt wild animals?

• They can tell us about how people lived and where they lived, and how they moved or travelled from place to place. [artificial or built]

• Houses, ring-forts, and other settlement types.

• Church sites, castles, mills, etc.

• Roads, tracks, passes, bridges, fords, causeways, etc.

Place-names and Biodiversity

• Place-names can also indicate what has been observed in the natural world.

• These names record types of plants, animals, birds and insects associated with a place, or describe a particular habitat that was noticed.

• The names of these places typically survive – passed down and used by each generation – but the natural world can change significantly, often due to a loss of biodiversity or a change in land-use.

Our favourite place-name elements from an activity we undertook were:

Banbh - piglet
Bréach - wolf
Eo/Yew and Gabhar - goat were joint third

Place-names and Folklore

• Sometimes, we might not know the meaning of a place-name because it was anglicised and the Irish meaning is no longer clear.

• Stories, poems, or songs about a place can help us in finding out what people knew about a place and its name.

• Do you know of any stories, poems or songs about your townland or local area? Did anything happen there? Who might know what happened there?

• See categories like ‘How the People Lived Long Ago’; ‘The Famine’; ‘Riddles’; ‘Cures’; ‘Weather-Lore’

Approximately 740,000 pages (288,000 pages in the pupils’ original exercise books; 451,000 pages in bound volumes) of folklore and local tradition were compiled by pupils from 5,000 primary schools in the Irish Free State between 1937 and 1939. See below the pages submitted by the pupils of Quignamanger National School.

Scoilnet Maps

We explored the use of Scoilnet Maps to compare the current maps of our area with historical maps. We could see clearly how our townlands and villages have changed. Where once there were fields, there are now housing estates etc