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Well ,etymologist eh.

I'm sure there are more qualified scholars out there,
better capable than I am to accept this title. But it does have a ring to it.

Basardised!!! oh now I never said that. It may well be that foil also
means cliff, but I would have called a cliff "aill". I am open to correction
on the meaning of foilnamuck by all means.

Its when I saw that word ,and someone asking what it means in English,
I translate what I see to Irish.

One has to remember that all place names, etc were in Irish many many
years ago and that most of the people would not have been illiterate and
the names would really only have been mention in speech rather than
written, so when they were put down on paper it would have been by
scholars that may not have understood the Pronunciation or the local
dialect. When you read Foilnamuck and Fuil Na Muic they do seem the
same, but if you heard the Irish Pronunciation of it, you would never put
the two together.

I seem to be rambling on so I'll halt here.But I do accept that cliff or
any other word may have several way of being spelt.

Ahhhh! Now I know where it is, 'The Pigs Blood', neighbour of 'The Dogs Bollo.....'

>> But I do accept that cliff or any other word may have several way of being spelt.

I originally suggested cliff, because that's Joyce's interpretation of foil. He ain't always right though ...

Ah, fascinating. So, the original "foil" might have been one that in Irish was pronounced, say "fweel," or "fee-ahl" or something else, each of which might have been different words with different meanings.

We have examples of that even here in the States, where "Gnaw Bone supposedly came from a mishearing of the original French name of Narbonne. Similar mishearings have left Americans with Low Freight (L'Eau Froid), Lemon Fair (Les Monts Verts) and Bob Ruly (Bois Brulé). Native American names were more often than not mangled into forms more easy on the European tongue: Oxopaugsguaug became Oxyboxy; Moskitu-auke to Mosquito Hawk; and Waakaack to Waycake Creek." Well, supposedly.

"when they were put down by scholars"??
Irish placename did not change gradually over generation. they were changed over a matter of year by surveyors under instruction of the monach. this was done in an attempt to purge the Irish of their culture because it was felt they would be less of a threat if anglicanised. let us not forget.