Place names
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The Gaelic landscape has been celebrated in poetry, prose and song. Place names can often give us a sense of history and also of geography. Geographical features are described in great detail through colour, flora, fauna and human features. Throughout Scotland, not just in the Highlands and islands, we can see evidence of this, in road signs and on maps.
Once you've learned a few phrases, you can try to work out the original meaning of place names. But remember that these names can become corrupted over time for a number of reasons, and so what may appear obvious at first glance can turn out to have an entirely different meaning.
Why don't we start with some simple examples?
Place names describe trees in the landscape, such as
which can be seen in
Features in the landscape which resemble the parts of the body (not all literal), such as
which in turn can be seen in
You'll remember in A1 Cuspair 5 we looked at colours in Gaelic. Gaelic's colour spectrum is unique and reflects colours according to nature.
These colours can be seen in these place names
We saw some descriptive names and place names in the conversation.
Here are just some of common words you will come across when looking at maps of the Highlands and islands.
And each one of these gives us a place name.