CLOG (Univ. of Glasgow)

Ó Maolalaigh, Roibeard

English

On the Possible Origins of Scottish Gaelic iorram ‘rowing song’

Editor, The

103
The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 12, 2018, 103
The Journal of Scottish Name Studies
County abbreviations for Scotland, England and Wales (pre-1975)
ABD Aberdeenshire KNT Kent
AGL Anglesey LAN Lanarkshire
ANG Angus LEI Leicestershire
ARG Argyllshire LIN Lincolnshire
AYR Ayrshire LNC Lancashire
BDF Bedfordshire MDX Middlesex
BNF Banffshire MER Merionethshire
BRE Brecknockshire MLO Midlothian
BRK Berkshire MON Monmouthshire
BTE Bute MOR Morayshire
BUC Buckinghamshire MTG Montgomeryshire
BWK Berwickshire NAI Nairnshire
CAI Caithness NFK Norfolk
CAM Cambridgeshire NTB Northumberland
CHE Cheshire NTP Northamptonshire
CLA Clackmannanshire NTT Nottinghamshire
CMB Cumberland ORK Orkney
CNW Cornwall OXF Oxfordshire
CRD Cardiganshire PEB Peeblesshire
CRM Carmarthenshire PEM Pembrokeshire
CRN Caernarvonshire PER Perthshire
DEN Denbighshire RAD Radnorshire
DEV Devon RNF Renfrewshire
DMF Dumfriesshire ROS Ross and Cromarty
DNB Dunbartonshire ROX Roxburghshire
DOR Dorsetshire RUT Rutland
DRB Derbyshire SFK Suffolk
DRH Durham SHE Shetland
ELO East Lothian SHR Shropshire
ESX Essex SLK Selkirkshire
FIF Fife SOM Somerset
FLI Flintshire SSX Sussex
GLA Glamorgan STF Staffordshire
GLO Gloucestershire STL Stirlingshire
GTL Greater London SUR Surrey
HMP Hampshire SUT Sutherland
HNT Huntingdonshire WAR Warwickshire
HRE Herefordshire WIG Wigtownshire
HRT Hertfordshire WLO West Lothian
INV Inverness-shire WLT Wiltshire
IOM Isle of Man WML Westmoreland
IOW Isle of Wight WOR Worcestershire
KCB Kirkcudbrightshire YOE Yorkshire (East Riding)
KCD Kincardineshire YON Yorkshire (North Riding)
KNR Kinross-shire YOW Yorkshire (West Riding)


County Abbreviations

Waugh, Doreen

Kristján Ahronson, Viking-Age Communities: Pap-Names and Papar in 
the Hebridean Islands, (BAR British Series, 450), Archaeopress: Oxford, 
2007. iv + 76 pp. £25. ISBN 978-1-4073-0162-4
!e BAR series of archaeological monographs, which was started in 1974, 
provides a vehicle for publication of scholarly work in progress, keeping 
readers abreast of research which might otherwise wait until the end of the 
archaeological or other related work for publication. 
In light of this, it is worth drawing the reader’s attention to the fact that 
Kristján Ahronson’s work for this book was done under the auspices of the 
impressive multi-disciplinary Papar Project, led by Dr Barbara Crawford of 
the School of History, University of St Andrews. !e Papar Project was made 
possible by two grants in 2001 and 2003 from the Carnegie Trust for the 
Universities of Scotland to Dr Crawford, Professor Ian Simpson of the School 
of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling and, in Phase 
1 of the Project, Beverley Ballin Smith of Glasgow University Archaeological 
Research Division. Kristján Ahronson’s preparatory research for Viking Age 
Communities: Pap-names and Papar in the Hebridean Islands was funded by 
one of these Carnegie grants, but there is scant recognition of this over-arching 
Papar Project in Ahronson’s somewhat amateurish Acknowledgements on p. ii or, 
indeed, elsewhere in his book. He has chosen to publish the toponymic work 
that he undertook for the Papar Project in isolation and without clear reference 
to related material from other disciplines, now published on the Project website 
<www.paparproject.org.uk>, which is linked to the Royal Commission on the 
Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), and which was 
"rst launched in 2005, with the addition of the Hebridean material in 2008. I 
would encourage the reader to consult the Papar Project website which places 
in context the toponymic work conducted by various researchers, including 
Ahronson. 
Having said that, Dr Ahronson, although perhaps not giving full 
recognition to the importance of working in partnership with scholars from 
his own and other disciplines, does introduce his text by making reference 
to Icelandic archaeological remains such as ‘sculpted stones and carvings in 
caves’ which whet our appetite for further research into ‘an unexplored facet 
of early Christianity’ and he focuses on place-names as his own vehicle for 
exploration in his ‘case study of Hebridean Pap-islands’ (p. 3). It would have 
been useful, at this early point in his book, to have these Hebridean islands 
identi"ed by name and located on an adjacent map or, at the very least, to have 
a footnote indicating where, in his book, one could "nd such information. It 
would also have been useful to "nd some analytical comment on the fact that 
!e Journal of Scottish Name Studies 3, 2009, 159–62
160 Doreen Waugh
the Pap-names appear to be absent from the southern Hebridean islands, at 
least given the present extent of our knowledge about the occurrence of these 
names. !e relevant map does appear on p. 6 and the caption indicates that 
it is adapted from a ‘map circulated at 15 March 2003 Scottish Papar Project 
meeting in St Andrews’. One has the impression, from the References at the 
end of his book (pp. 74–76), that most of Ahronson’s reading and research 
relates to the period before that seminal meeting in 2003.  For instance, as 
well as mentioning archaeology in his Introduction, Ahronson quite rightly 
draws attention to the study of medieval texts such as Adomnán, Dicuil and 
Ari fró#i, all of which have been studied by earlier scholars and which can 
usefully be revisited. An exception to this concentration on material prior to 
2003 is frequent reference to the important papers by the Danish place-name 
scholar, Peder Gammeltoft, which date to 2004. At risk of appearing petty-
minded, I also wish to point out that more careful checking of the References 
by Ahronson, prior to publication of his book in 2007, would have led him 
to note that Arne Kruse’s paper which he describes as being ‘in press’ was, 
in fact, published in 2005, and that the editors were ‘P. Gammeltoft, C. 
Hough and D. Waugh’, not ‘J. Waugh’ as he states. !is example of authorial 
carelessness, however minor, is not isolated and was a cause of some irritation 
throughout the book, wherever it occurred.
On the positive side, however, there is much to interest the place-name 
researcher in the place-name inventory recorded in Chapter !ree, and 
further work could still usefully be done on its contents by a researcher with 
the opportunity to travel to the Western Isles. Ahronson culled his inventory 
from a variety of written sources, as well as from early maps of the region, and 
the resultant collection of names is potentially useful, both in the context of 
considering Pap-names, and in the broader context of collecting a database of 
Scottish place-names. Information from oral sources is included, but at one 
remove from the informant(s), in that it has been collected by someone other 
than Ahronson who uses the written, or occasionally taped, recording of the 
information. !e hypotheses which he considered when interpreting the data 
are worth noting here because they incorporate much recent scholarly thinking 
about Pap-names. He outlines the various possibilities thus:
‘Working from the premise that a toponymic inventory re"nes ideas 
drawn from large-scale distribution studies, multiple hypotheses were 
considered when interpreting the data:
–$ !e distribution of Pap-names re%ects the settlement of early Christian 
Gaels before the Viking Age.
–$ !e distribution of Pap-names re%ects retrospective names given by 
Reviews 161
Old Norse speakers in either the late ninth and tenth century or the 
twelfth century.
–$  !e distribution of Pap-names re%ects the character of the earliest 
Norse settlement.’ (p. 21)
From consideration of the last point, in particular, one assumes that 
Ahronson arrives at the opening words of the title of his book (Viking-Age 
Communities) which intrigued me prior to reading his text, although the 
evidence presented therein for the existence of such communities is slight. One 
further comment is that he should have explained, for the reader fresh to the 
subject, why he omits the 11th century from his consideration.
Two personal names predominate as collectors in the inventory: Donald 
MacKillop (Harris) and Anke-Beate Stahl (Barra). In fact, it surprised me that 
Anke-Beate Stahl, in particular, did not receive mention in the Acknowledgements 
at the start of the book, because her PhD thesis entitled ‘Place-Names 
of Barra in the Outer Hebrides’ was completed in 1999 and she has an in-
depth knowledge of the area. Like Ahronson, she produced an inventory of 
material for the Papar Project. It is worth pointing out that Kristján Ahronson’s 
discussion is based solely on the four sites which he surveyed and does not 
include the four sites surveyed by Stahl. His conclusions need to be viewed in 
the light of his partial coverage of the Hebridean material. Readers can now 
access all the material from the surveys undertaken by Ahronson and Stahl on 
the Papar Project website.
!is review would be incomplete without recognising, along with Ahronson, 
the important contribution to Pap-name research, by the two scholars Aidan 
MacDonald and Peder Gammeltoft. Both are given full credit in the course 
of Ahronson’s discussion and relevant papers expressing their conclusions are 
included in References at the end. Ahronson’s own conclusion from the four sites 
which he surveyed and, no doubt, from his wider reading and thinking about 
the subject, is that ‘Pap-names are Old Norse (not Old Irish) names, and that 
Hebridean Pab(b)ay islands underscore the ill-de"ned – but real – relationship 
between the area’s Norse speakers and early Christian communities’ (p. 73). 
His sample of place-names may be smaller than one would wish but this 
seems a reasonable conclusion and certainly one to be borne in mind by future 
researchers. Ahronson talks here of ‘future work’ and, earlier in the book, of 
‘place-name study on a wider front’ but does not make it clear who is to carry 
out this work. Many questions about the Pap-names do remain and we are 
grateful to Kristján Ahronson for planting thoughts in the minds of his readers, 
whether or not we agree with his conclusions. 
Ahronson attempts to argue that the Hebrides is a ‘core area’ for Pap-names 
162 Robert McColl Millar
1 [It was in fact almost too late. !e volume was presented to Dr Gelling at a conference in 
Edinburgh in late March 2008, and she died in April 2009. She did, however, read all the 
contributions, and wrote letters of appreciation to all the contributors. Ed.]
and, therefore, presumably illustrative of all such areas, but his argument is not 
wholly convincing. Why should the Hebrides be any more of a ‘core area’ than, 
for example, the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland? Any comprehensive 
coverage of Pap-names should not be limited to the Hebrides but should 
include all the North Atlantic islands where these names occur, which is the 
approach adopted by the Papar Project, of which Ahronson’s survey material, 
presented in this book, forms a thought-provoking part. 
D&'(() W*+,-, University of Edinburgh
O.J. Padel and David N. Parsons, eds, A Commodity of Good Names: 
Essays in Honour of Margaret Gelling, Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2008. 415 
pp. £35.00. ISBN 978-1-900289-90-0
Margaret Gelling’s scholarship has had a tremendous impact upon the "eld of 
place-name studies; as importantly, she has helped frame a connection with 
related "elds – historical studies and historical linguistics in particular. !is 
Festschrift is therefore in many ways long overdue.1
!e book is split into seven basic thematic units. In the "rst, Names 
and History, Steven Bassett discusses ‘Sitting above the salt: the origins of 
the borough of Droitwich’. !is in-depth study of the ‘odd’ nature of the 
borough, which, in Domesday Book, had burgesses but no apparent centre, is 
connected to the ancient salt trade. Droitwich may either have been centred 
on three central brine ponds, in which case the borough would have been 
tiny, or it may have been much larger than most boroughs and might be 
more readily seen as a constituted industry rather than a place. In ‘An early 
boundary of the dioceses of Canterbury and Rochester’, Nicholas Brooks 
provides a most illuminating analysis of the topography of a most unusual 
boundary between the two dioceses, found in a 10th-century Irish psalter. In 
‘Place-names and pottery’, Christopher Dyer demonstrates how the critical 
use of a set of modern and medieval names with potter, crocker and crock 
can be used to aid our understanding of the medieval pottery business. Joy 
Jenkyns, in ‘!e litigious afterlife of an Anglo-Saxon charter: Wyke Regis, 
Dorset’, presents a witty and erudite discussion of how ancient documents 
can (and were) used for political and personal ends. S.E. Kelly’s ‘An early 
minster at Eynsham, Oxfordshire’ is an interesting and closely-argued analysis 
of one of the most celebrated Anglo-Saxon monasteries. It provides the little 
!e Journal of Scottish Name Studies 3, 2009, 162–66


Kristján Ahronson: Viking-Age Communities: Pap-Names and Papar in the Hebridean Islands

Cox, Richard A.V.

Scottish Gaelic Sannda and Its Aliases

Kidd, Sheila M.

Contents 
 
Foreword  
 
i 
Acknowledgements 
 
ii 
Contributors 
 
iii 
Gaelic in Glasgow: The Onomastic Evidence 
Simon Taylor 
 
1 
Some Notes from my Glasgow Scrapbook, 1500–1800 
Ronald Black 
 
20 
‘Chan e chleachd bhith an cabhsair chlach’: Am Bàrd Gàidhlig ’s 
am Baile Mòr bhon 17mh Linn chun an 20mh. 
Michel Byrne 
 
55 
Mac Bàillidh Hirt ‘the Son of the Bailiff of St Kilda’ on his First 
Trip to Glasgow: An Eighteenth-century Gaelic Satirical 
Narrative Tale from the Islay in Gaelic-Scots Orthography 
Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh 
 
89 
Tormod MacLeòid: Àrd-Chonsal nan Gàidheal? 
Sheila M. Kidd 
 
107 
Highland Migration to Glasgow in 1851 
Charles W. J. Withers 
 
130 
Idir dhá thír: Donegal Emigrants in Glasgow 
Cathair Ó Dochartaigh 
 
150 
Radical Romantics: Glasgow Gaels and the Highland Land 
Agitation, 1870–1890 
Donald E. Meek 
 
161 
Glasgow and Gaelic Writing 
Kenneth D. MacDonald 
 
 
186 
  
Ruaraidh MacThòmais: The Glasgow Verse 
Michelle Macleod and Moray Watson 
 
216 
Confessions of a Chinese Beetle or, Reflections on Writing 
Poetry in Gaelic in the Twenty-first Century 
Christopher Whyte 
 
228 
Interviews with Ruaraidh MacThòmais 
Ruaraidh MacThòmais / Christopher Whyte 
 
239 
 


Whyte, Christopher

MacIlleBhàin, Crìsdean

Derick Thomson: The Recent Poetry

Thanisch, Eystein

What the Butlers saw: Acallam na Senórach and its marginalia in the Book of the White Earl

King, Jake

The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 14 (2020), 175 
 
 
DREÒLAINN, SORCHA AND IORUAIDH:  
THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOME GAELIC EXONYMS 
 
JAKE KING 
Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba 
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands 
 
The presentation discussed a set of place-names that were used in medieval and 
modern Gaelic narratives. It was shown that these names seemed to have 
originally denoted real places in the known medieval world, but came be used 
as ‘stock-names’ for usage in heroic romances, with their original location 
forgotten. In the modern era these names then came to denote regions of 
Scotland. The names covered (with their modern identifications) were An t-
Sorcha as Ardnamurchan; An Dreòllainn as Mull; An Ioruaidh as Morvern and 
Tìr fo Thuinn as Tiree. 
 


Dreòlainn, Sorcha and Ioruaidh: The Origin and Development of Some Gaelic Exonyms

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On the Possible Origins of Scottish Gaelic iorram ‘rowing song’

County Abbreviations

Kristján Ahronson: Viking-Age Communities: Pap-Names and Papar in the Hebridean Islands

Scottish Gaelic Sannda and Its Aliases

Contents

Derick Thomson: The Recent Poetry

What the Butlers saw: Acallam na Senórach and its marginalia in the Book of the White Earl

Dreòlainn, Sorcha and Ioruaidh: The Origin and Development of Some Gaelic Exonyms

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