Clare Island Survey. 



PLACE-NAMES AND FAMILY NAMES. 



By JOHN MACNEILL. 



Read January 27. Published Apkil 30, 1913. 



The list of place-names of Clare Island collected in this paper will, I trust, 

 be found to have a scientific value from several distinct standpoints. The 

 Ordnance Survey maps do not aim at recording fully the topographical 

 names for divisions of land less than townlands ; there is probably no 

 principle on which they act in inserting or omitting the names of smaller 

 divisions. 1 The townland names have acquired a sort of legal status, and 

 thereby a definite degree of public recognition, and yet in many instances the 

 division of the country into townlands has been a matter of arbitrary choice. 

 Most of the townlands are, no doubt, divisions marked out and named by 

 ancient tradition. In a large number, however, new names have been 

 substituted in recent times for the old names, and even within living 

 memory new townlands have been created at the will, apparently, of the 

 landowners. For example, 1 have been unable to trace the name of the 

 townland of Hazelbrook, in which I was once resident, at Portmarnock, Co. 

 Dublin, in any record ear her than 1840. Until about that time, the land 

 now so named was part of another townland. How satisfactory the topography 

 by townlands is may be judged from the fact that some of them contain 

 less than 40 acres and others more than 4,000. In Clare Island, the town- 

 land of Fawnglass contains 75 acres 2 roods and 14 perches, and the 

 townland of Bunnamohaun contains 1182 acres 1 rood and 3 perches. 

 The Ordnance Survey map, on the scale of six inches to the mile, names no 

 subdivision of the latter townland, which is about two miles long and one 

 mile broad and comprises more than one-fourth of the island. Bunnamohaun 

 now contains no human habitation, and consists almost entirely of rough 

 grazing and waste land. But the name shows that part of it was formerly 

 inhabited, since it means " the low ground of the cabins." It is further 

 evident that this name has been artificially extended in signification. " The 

 low ground " must have been the western side of the island, or a portion 



1 The six-inch maps of Clare Island contain just one name, not well transliterated, of a smaller 

 division, "Kooaunbeg." out of the many recorded in this paper; the much larger adjoining 

 division, TIuaiti ttlop, is not named on the map (Mayo S4). 



R.I.A. PBOO., VOL. XXXI- A 3 



