Naming names: An interview with Dr Aengus Finnegan

What’s in a name? Well, quite a lot, actually, according to Dr Aengus Finnegan.

The Glasson man specialises in studying the history of placenames in Ireland and has been co-ordinating the Westmeath Field Names Recording Project over the last two years.

Several communities across Westmeath have been engaging with this initiative, which has unearthed little-known stories behind the names of hundreds of fields and local landmarks.

Community meetings organised by the project in various parts of the county have led to lively interaction between long-term residents of an area and people who have moved in more recently and don't know much about its history.

“If you go into a rural area now there’s not as much contact between people as there used to be, because everybody’s busy,” explained Aengus. 

“Someone local might have huge knowledge, and might know the name of every crossroads and every holy well, but there wouldn’t necessarily be an opportunity to share that knowledge. Then you find that it could be lost.

“The meetings are a great opportunity for people to share (that information). A lot of chat goes on, and a lot of stories are told. It’s a good community building project in that sense, because it’s an opportunity for people to meet and get to know their own area and know their neighbours better.”

Aengus, a son of Felim and Josephine Finnegan, lectures in Irish at the University of Limerick and still lives in his native Glasson. His interest in history and heritage began during his childhood.

“I was always interested in Lough Ree. We had a boat and we’d go on the odd trip on the lake. One of my neighbours was born on one of the islands, and hearing stories about that was very interesting.

“So I did a school project about the islands on Lough Ree, and Gearoid O’Brien gave me a big folder of stuff in the library. That probably started me off, and I continued from there.”

A past pupil of Tubberclair NS and the Marist College, he went on to attend NUI Galway, completing an Arts degree in Irish and Geography.

After this degree, he found that there was Government funding available for a handful of scholarships on researching placenames.

Westmeath was one of the counties in which little research had been done on placenames, so Aengus successfully applied for the scholarship and started a PhD focusing on the history of townland names in two baronies near Athlone.

“That led me into a whole new area into which I hadn’t necessarily intended to go,” he said.

He said the scholarships were offered by the Government to help train a new generation of people in the “quite specialised” work of researching placenames.

The two baronies he focused on – Kilkenny West and Clonlonan – took in areas from Ballykeeran to Tang, and from Drumraney to Mount Temple, Baylin, Castledaly and Moate.

Having spent the best part of five years working on his PhD he decided to make researching placenames a focus of his career. So, how does one set about researching a placename?

“Basically, most of the placenames - about 90% - were originally Irish, Celtic names,” he said. “They come down to us on the ordinance survey maps spelled in English. Sometimes it can be easy enough to make out what the original Irish name was, and sometimes it’s very difficult.

“So, you go back through written sources and try to find all of the different spellings of a name... You go back as far as you can and the vast majority of (material) relates to the seventeenth century.

“From that, then, you can build up a profile of a townland over time, what it originally was, and also, sometimes, interesting changes that came about over time. The other thing is that the local pronunciation is very important and can give some important clues as to what the name actually means, or the original form of the name.

“People think of placenames as being intensely local, but actually when you look at a large number of them you get a really broad appreciation for history.

“It's an endlessly interesting topic and it means that when you’re driving around the country you’re never bored! You’re always looking around at what’s on road signs and things like that.”

His and others' research on field names and names of townlands has been preserved on the websites logainm.ie and meitheal.logainm.ie

The Westmeath Field Names Project, which is operated through Westmeath County Council with funding from The Heritage Council, began in 2018 and last year worked with a group in Drumraney and another outside Mullingar, near Clonkill GAA Club.

This year it has focused on Fore and Collinstown, and Aengus said there were also plans to work with groups in Mount Temple and Kinnegad.

“You’re sharing information within the community and you get a hint about what fields were used for. One that came up in Fore was a field called 'the hop yard'. With craft beer, everybody’s talking about hops now, but they were obviously grown in Ireland in the past because that field was the hop yard.

“There’s lots of interesting stuff that comes up about crops that were grown in the past, and stories about things that happened in particular fields.”

The funding from the Heritage Council is provided on a year-by-year basis so it's not certain the project in Westmeath will continue next year.

In doing this work, Aengus has become acutely aware of the importance of placenames, which are not always correctly written on our road signs.

“You see so many mistakes, especially on the ones the NRA did for the motorway programme, which were very sloppy. I think that comes from a lack of understanding of how important and historically significant the names of our towns and villages are.

“They’re important to people for their local identity, so with the website logainm.ie, there’s really no excuse for the likes of Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the local authorities to not get these things right.

“Another bugbear I have is the way the Irish versions are written in italics, which makes them very hard to read. That would be bad practice internationally. All over Europe there are signs that are bilingual, and they usually differentiate between them by colour which makes them a lot easier to read for both languages.”

In his 'day job', as a lecturer in Irish in Limerick, he sees “a lot of interest” from students in the language, which he said is in a healthier state now than it was at times in the past.

“If you look at other small languages around the world, a lot of them are in trouble and don’t get any State recognition at all. There are very few languages in the world that have as good a chance (of survival) as Irish, I would say.”

Outside of work, he is a committee member of the Old Athlone Society and enjoys hiking and mountaineering. “I do a bit of farming at home as well, so I like just getting out and about, walking, and going out on the lake when I can.”

He is also working on a long-term project, a book on the townland names of the whole of county Westmeath.

“It’s going to take me a few years to do it, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to publish a book covering all of the townland names in the county which would analyse them, what they mean, and what we can learn from them about how things have changed over time,” he said.