by P. Mitchell
The Gaelic used for place names in Scotland is very old and has come down to us verbally, so that the modern day equivalent is very much phonetical. It was also influenced by the local dialects in the various parts of Scotland. As there was very little travel these became fairly pronounced and in some cases became completely new words.
For instance the word "ach" meaning a field became "auch" or "och" in the Southwest and Central areas. "bal" meaning a farm was used extensively in Central Scotland and Fife, while in the Border Country "tun" from the old English also meant farm. "Bye" from the Norse "byr" is used in those areas with a strong Norse influence to also mean farm. In the Islands and the far North "bost" is used frequently from the Norse "borstadt" and "tigh" from the Gaelic, (usually a house), can also mean farm.
From this it can be seen that a knowledge of history and geography together with a good imagination, will help to find the meanings. A quote from Rennie McOwan says it in the best way.
"A mountain is a mountain in England, but when the climber is in Scotland it may be a beinn, a creag or a meall, a spidean, a sgorr or a torr."
The written language that has come down to us has one other disadvantage. Except after "C" the letter "H" is used to denote an aspirated letter or even a series of letters. Some people believe that the extra letters were used by the Monks handwriting their texts and it was an act of devotion to insert as many letters as possible to enable the illuminating to be more colourful and to prove their learning.
Locally, as little as 100 years ago the village of Strathyre was spelt Strathire and previous to that Strath-thir but the original Gaelic could have been Strath-thioradh or even Strath-theotnair.
The late Rev. Alexander M MacGregor, former Minister of the Parish, compiled translations of all the areas, lands, glens, lochs and rivers in the Parish of Balquhidder and published the list of about 300 translations in 1868. Later in 1886 the then Minister, Rev. David Cameron, published his additional notes to some of the translations.
We have extracted some of the translations from the 1886 publication which relate to the:
This is the full alphabetical listing of about 300 translations and includes the additional notes. This is more for those people with an interest in the Gaelic and has been put on one page for ease of reference (approximately 90kbytes)
|
