"Irish Names of Places" by P.W. Joyce: Clare references

[Paddy Casey]

A posting in the Irish Placenames Yahoo group just flagged an amazing cornucopia of copyright-free information called The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org ) which must have been around for ages but is a new discovery for me.

Specifically, it provides links to the three weighty downloadable volumes of Irish Names of Places by P.W. Joyce (> 30mb apiece, > 1800 pages in total). These were compiled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and contain numerous references to Clare placenames. Just download the files, fire up the PDF file with the Adobe reader, punch 'Clare' into the Search facility, and boggle at the results. Oh, and if you are reading this, Sharon, search for 'Carbery' (sic) and you will find references to that name from - fasten your safety belt - the third century AD !!

The PDF files for Volumes 1, 2 and 3 respectively can be downloaded from:

Vol. 1 (1869): http://ia310927.us.archive.org/1/items/ ... ycuoft.pdf
Vol. 2 (1871): http://ia310926.us.archive.org/1/items/ ... ycuoft.pdf
Vol. 3 (1913): http://ia311533.us.archive.org/3/items/ ... ycuoft.pdf

There are two further volumes on Irish placenames, called "Irish Local Names Explained", which were published by the same author in 1902 and 1922. They are much more concise than "Irish Names of Places" (rather like our modern-day "....for Dummies" book series, e.g. "Household Cleaning and Dusting for Dummies"). There is a little tutorial on pronunciation of Irish words and the ways those words were mangled when spelled in English. There are lists of Irish placenames, many from Clare, and a little dictionary of Irish root words.

These latter two volumes can be downloaded as follows:

Irish Local Names Explained (1922) 7.2 Mb
http://ia311527.us.archive.org/0/items/ ... yciala.pdf

Irish Local Names Explained (1902) 9.9 Mb
http://ia311502.us.archive.org/2/items/ ... ycuoft.pdf

Good placename references are vital to local history research, of course, but are also central to the family history endeavour. One can spend ages searching for an ancestor in some place only to discover that at the time ancestor lived the place name was spelled quite differently. That's why I am posting this reference source here.

Paddy

[Doug]

Thanks Paddy
These look very interesting.
Doug Burnett
Satellite Beach
FL