Re: Very bold indeed! | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Foilnamuck 1

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Any idea what Foilnamuck is in English?

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BuckyE Jan 18, 2006 00:27:17

Replying to Cloch Mor

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.

FourWinds Jan 18, 2006 07:40:27

Replying to BuckyE

So many Irish names are written down wrong for exactly that reason: someone wrote it down as they heard it. Depending on the accent it could be anything. A fave megalithic example - Magheraghanrush came from Mochra Con Ros.

The problem gets bad in counties such as Meath, where the Normans and then the English drove out (or killed) the local Irish population and so many of the Irish roots were lost. Worse still, many places were just renamed to something completely different (Ashbourne for example) and the original name was lost forever.

StoneLifter Jan 18, 2006 08:00:34

Replying to BuckyE

Exactly the same thing happened in India with the British colonial rule. Difficult to pronounce names, for western tongues, were heavily anglicised or completely altered. Kol kata became Calcutta, Mumbai became Bombay etc.

CianMcLiam Jan 18, 2006 08:40:27

Replying to BuckyE

Some are anglicisations of Viking and Norman words as well, just to add even more obscurity into the mix. They did want to change the Dingle area of Kerry back to An Daingean recently though I'm not sure thats really necessary as the names we do know are fairly well recorded (for towns at least). Preserving the small townsland names would be more important since they do hold some important clues about the area and how/why it was settled and are at much greater risk of being lost.

I wish they <i>would</i> change Drogheda back to Droichead Athá (Old Bridge) though, it gets embarrasing when all the tourists, Pope JPII and even Bill Clinton call it Dro<i>g</i> Hee da, which sounds like nothing in the Irish language.