Place-Names of Carrickfergus and Broadisland

On Saturday 1st June I took the ferry over the Irish Sea to attend the book launch in my home town of Carrickfergus of Philip Hoy's Place-Names of Carrickfergus and Broadisland, a superb book examining the origins of placenames in the East Antrim town, whether derived from the Irish language, Scots, Norman French, or English. 

I had the pleasure to talk to Philip prior to the event, and he discussed how the book was the result of a Facebook project he started a few years ago in 2021, Placenames of Carrickfergus (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069750918867). Philip is from an Ulster Scots background from Carrick, and has spent a few years learing the Irish language, and has applied what he has learned diligently!

The book is broken down geographically into placenames by tuath (a sub-kingdom), then parish and townland, with each entry noting the modern name, its Irish equivalernt, likely meaning, and then a grid reference as to where to find it. A surpise for me was to learn that the village of Eden, where my dad grew up intially on the outskirts of Carrick, had nothing to do with the Biblical Eden, but instead comes from the Irish equivalent of the Scots Gaelic word aodann, meaning face, with the original name being Éadan Gréine, meaning sunny face. You live and learn! 

If interested in obtaining a copy, keep an eye on Philip's Facebook page, and it will also be available on sale locally in Carrick. And it's throughly recommended! 

It was also great to meet Linda Ervine for the first time, who has been doing such great work with Turas in East Belfast in promoting the Irish language - you can find out more about course run there at https://turasbelfast.com.  

Chris  

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.