Cowal place names and their origins Place names in Dunoon’s forests and around the Cowal Peninsula give us many clues to the way this land was used and the different people who settled it. Here are just a few examples. Gaelic names Gaelic names dominate hereabouts, reflecting the settlement of the area by Gaelic speaking people from Ireland from about 500 AD. Cowal ‘Cowal’ probably comes from Comghall or Coughail, the grandson of Fergus Mor, leader of the first Irish chieftains who invaded the area that is now Argyll in the sixth century. Dunoon Dunoon has had over forty different spellings over the years, but undoubtedly dun means a hill, usually a fortified one – the same root as the English ‘down’ (as in downland). Dunoon was perhaps the settlement of an Iron Age local chief. The whole name could mean fort on the river. Lamont Lamont, the name of the ruling clan during medieval times, is the anglicised form of the Gaelic laomunn, taken from the Norse lagman – law-man. The stress is on the first syllable, just as ‘Lamont’ is still pronounced in Cowal. Ardlamont, Ardnadam and Ardentinny Aird, a height or promontory, is another common root; put them together and you get Ardlamont – the ‘promontory of the Lamonts’, the southernmost tip of the Cowal Peninsula. Aird also appears in Ardnadam, near Sandbank, and Ardentinny – teine is height of the fire, which could have meant a warning beacon or perhaps something from a pagan religious ceremony. Inverchaolain and Inverchapel Inverchaolain takes its name from inver, a confluence or river mouth, and caol meaning narrows – it is located at the mouth of a narrow river, on Loch Striven. Inverchapel, at the south end of Loch Eck, combines inver with the Gaelic capull or horse (which comes into English in ‘cavalry’). Inellan The roots of the name Innellan are uncertain, but it might contain the element eilean, an island, referring to an off-shore rock which is a common perch for birds. Norse names The Vikings don’t seem to have settled in great numbers in Cowal, perhaps due to strong resistance from the locals, and there are few place names of Norse origin, in contrast to other parts of Argyll. We know they sailed up Loch Long, which they called Skipfjord in the Icelandic sagas, in 1263 to Arrochar. They dragged their ships to Loch Lomond across the narrow stretch of land – a tarbert – at present-day Tarbet. They did give us Ormidale at the head of Loch Riddon in the west, which means snake dale (snake and dragon tend to mean the same thing in Old Norse). There are also places where the Norse influence comes through – the Norse system of land measurement was taken over and extended by the Gaels, and so we end up with place names Feorlinn (farthing land), Lephinchapel (half-penny land of the horses) and Lephinmore (big half-penny land). Anglicised names As the influence of southerners increased, particularly in Victorian times, so names in the Cowal Peninsula were changed or corrupted. For example, Holy Loch was originally An Loch Seanta, the charmed or magical lake – perhaps named for the ancient chapel built beside it at Kilmun. English names were superimposed on Gaelic ones: Claddyhouse – shore house – became Sandbank for its muddy shores, and when industrialist James Hunter bought Camasreinach, ‘bay of ferns’, it was renamed Hunter’s Quay.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 11:11:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015