As you will have spotted, I have increasingly become interested in the place names of Uist and am now putting together a list of such place names with possible interpretations. Strictly I should be calling it an ononmasticon but no-one understands that so I’ll stick at a list. In fact, I’m creating a database and run a google map off it. You can see it here but it is very much a work in progress.
One fascinating project has been the Papar project, looking at ON ‘pap’ place names in Scotland as they represent Norse recognition of Christianity and so are indicative of early church settlement. There are ten such place names on the Western Isles.
Looking at place names however, two things I have learnt are that the Norse and the Gaels tended to use very prosaic names and if things start getting poetic, you are probably on the wrong track.
Secondly, and perhaps not unsurprisingly, the names of what Beveridge quaintly called ‘antiquities’ tend to be old names, nearly all Norse.
Two places caught my attention recently although it ended up as three places and four place names being involved. On the modern OS mapping, two adjacent stone circles on North Uist at the W end of Loch Euphort are called Sornach Coir’ Fhinn, near Langais, and Sornach a Phobuill, nearer Clachan.
The OS 1st mapping did not cover itself in glory here as they misplaced the name Sornach Coir’ Fhinn to the site of other stone circle, a fact Beveridge pointed out, and used the alternative name Pobull Fhinn for the Langais circle. Unusually for Uist, we have an earlier name with the Reid plan of 1799 naming the Langais stone circle as Fingal’s furnace.
ScG sornach is one of those interesting but frustrating words that seems to have a multitude of 9unconnected) meanings such as ‘kiln’, ‘bonfire in a ring of stones’ or ‘having a snout’, ‘great heap of boulders at the foot of a precipice. The OS name book recognised they were on difficult ground with their interpretation of ‘Fingal's Hollowed point’ for Sornach Coir’ Fhinn as the name for a stone circle although for Pobull Fhinn they were happier with ‘Fingal’s people’.
‘Fingal’s people’ reeks of a folk etymology of people turned to stone by a mysterious Fingal, although as Beveridge points out Fingal probably stems from fionn-gall = white lowlander whilst ‘Fingal’s Furnace’ likewise conjures up other worldly images of angles and demons. It is odd that the two stone circles both contain ‘sornach’, a relatively uncommon name in Gaelic place names. Is there a Norse alternative?
I would suggest the answer is yes. ON sjór = ‘sea’ and is relatively common in compounds whilst ON hnakki = ‘nape of the neck’ (with ‘-a’ for the genitive). Topographically ‘back of the neck of the sea’ is perfect for both stone circles situated as they are at the W end of the 10km long narrow Loch Euphort.
The small black circle marks Sornach a Phobuill and the kind people at Google have already marked Pobull Finn as they did Loch Euphort reaching E to the Minch - the W coast is visible just to the bottom right of the imnage.
One fascinating project has been the Papar project, looking at ON ‘pap’ place names in Scotland as they represent Norse recognition of Christianity and so are indicative of early church settlement. There are ten such place names on the Western Isles.
Looking at place names however, two things I have learnt are that the Norse and the Gaels tended to use very prosaic names and if things start getting poetic, you are probably on the wrong track.
Secondly, and perhaps not unsurprisingly, the names of what Beveridge quaintly called ‘antiquities’ tend to be old names, nearly all Norse.
Two places caught my attention recently although it ended up as three places and four place names being involved. On the modern OS mapping, two adjacent stone circles on North Uist at the W end of Loch Euphort are called Sornach Coir’ Fhinn, near Langais, and Sornach a Phobuill, nearer Clachan.
The OS 1st mapping did not cover itself in glory here as they misplaced the name Sornach Coir’ Fhinn to the site of other stone circle, a fact Beveridge pointed out, and used the alternative name Pobull Fhinn for the Langais circle. Unusually for Uist, we have an earlier name with the Reid plan of 1799 naming the Langais stone circle as Fingal’s furnace.
ScG sornach is one of those interesting but frustrating words that seems to have a multitude of 9unconnected) meanings such as ‘kiln’, ‘bonfire in a ring of stones’ or ‘having a snout’, ‘great heap of boulders at the foot of a precipice. The OS name book recognised they were on difficult ground with their interpretation of ‘Fingal's Hollowed point’ for Sornach Coir’ Fhinn as the name for a stone circle although for Pobull Fhinn they were happier with ‘Fingal’s people’.
‘Fingal’s people’ reeks of a folk etymology of people turned to stone by a mysterious Fingal, although as Beveridge points out Fingal probably stems from fionn-gall = white lowlander whilst ‘Fingal’s Furnace’ likewise conjures up other worldly images of angles and demons. It is odd that the two stone circles both contain ‘sornach’, a relatively uncommon name in Gaelic place names. Is there a Norse alternative?
I would suggest the answer is yes. ON sjór = ‘sea’ and is relatively common in compounds whilst ON hnakki = ‘nape of the neck’ (with ‘-a’ for the genitive). Topographically ‘back of the neck of the sea’ is perfect for both stone circles situated as they are at the W end of the 10km long narrow Loch Euphort.
The small black circle marks Sornach a Phobuill and the kind people at Google have already marked Pobull Finn as they did Loch Euphort reaching E to the Minch - the W coast is visible just to the bottom right of the imnage.
Coir’ Fhinn could also have the Norse roots of ON kýr = ‘cow’ (genitive the same) again used in several compounds, and ON vin = ‘meadow’. So for Sornach Coir’ Fhinn we have ‘cow’s meadow of the back of the neck of the sea’, not poetic yet pretty descriptive.
Sornach a Phobuill starts in a similar fashion although the ‘a’ here would be part of the genitive of ON hnakki, ON hnakka. The ‘h’ in ‘Phobuill’ is probably an effect of lenition and so we get to ON papi + býli = ‘farm of the priest’ and very similar to the Paible place name a few kilometres to the N.
Helpfully there is a nearby Loch a’ Phobaill (makred in the image above with the bigger black circle) equating with ‘loch of the priest’s farm’ showing that the ‘phobaill’ component is not tied in with the ‘sornach’ component.
Finally the alternative name of the Langais stone circle, Pobull Fhinn, equates with ON papi + býli + vin = ‘meadow of the priest’s farm’.
With this interpretation of pobull and their equivalents, I looked elsewhere in Scotland. There are four other place names on the OS 2nd edition mapping containing ‘Phobuill’.
One is Tom Phobuill (and the nearby Tomphubil) in Perthshire and the hillock is at the top of a glen with an early Medieaval incised cross and chapel site two kilometres to the N down the glen. This site does however seem a fair way from the Norse heartland.
Another, Cnoc a’ Phobuill, is on the N coast directly opposite Neave Island on which there is St. Columba’s Chapel, a chapel of possible antiquity. Right in the middle of Norse territory, what better place for a Priest’s Farm?!
Sornach a Phobuill starts in a similar fashion although the ‘a’ here would be part of the genitive of ON hnakki, ON hnakka. The ‘h’ in ‘Phobuill’ is probably an effect of lenition and so we get to ON papi + býli = ‘farm of the priest’ and very similar to the Paible place name a few kilometres to the N.
Helpfully there is a nearby Loch a’ Phobaill (makred in the image above with the bigger black circle) equating with ‘loch of the priest’s farm’ showing that the ‘phobaill’ component is not tied in with the ‘sornach’ component.
Finally the alternative name of the Langais stone circle, Pobull Fhinn, equates with ON papi + býli + vin = ‘meadow of the priest’s farm’.
With this interpretation of pobull and their equivalents, I looked elsewhere in Scotland. There are four other place names on the OS 2nd edition mapping containing ‘Phobuill’.
One is Tom Phobuill (and the nearby Tomphubil) in Perthshire and the hillock is at the top of a glen with an early Medieaval incised cross and chapel site two kilometres to the N down the glen. This site does however seem a fair way from the Norse heartland.
Another, Cnoc a’ Phobuill, is on the N coast directly opposite Neave Island on which there is St. Columba’s Chapel, a chapel of possible antiquity. Right in the middle of Norse territory, what better place for a Priest’s Farm?!