Talk on minor West Cork place names organised

A lecture on minor place names in West Cork will take place tonight.

Organised by Dúchas Clonakilty Heritage, the Zoom lecture will be given by Jerome Lordan where he will examine various place-name collections and resources relating to the West Cork coastline stretching from Beara to Kinsale.

Called ‘Deciphering the Minor Place-names along Cork’s Southwest Coastline’, he will discuss the origins of the once huge corpus of minor names that existed up to the recent past.

Concentrating in particular on the Courcey and Kilbrittain areas, Jerome will attempt to decipher some of the coastal place names in an effort to ensure their preservation in their original forms for posterity.

Finally, the correlation between the decline of the Irish language along the coast and the loss of the lore relating to the minor place names will be explored.

Jerome Lordan is a native of the Old Head of Kinsale and has spent 28 years in the fishing industry, working mostly along the south and west coasts of Ireland as well as spells in New Zealand, Australia and Cornwall.

On leaving the fishing industry he did a BA in archaeology and Celtic studies in UCC, and later completed an MA in local history for which he produced a thesis on the coastal placenames of Courceys.

In 2014 he published ‘No Flowers on a Sailor’s Grave: Shipwrecks of Kinsale and Courtmacsherry’. He now runs Kinsale Harbour Cruises.

The lecture takes place on Thursday 27 January at 8pm. To register for the lecture, visit duchasclonakiltyheritage.com.