Featured themes 01/02/2026

‘A plover or a Plover?’
Gleann Philibín / Glenphilipeen
‘the valley of Pilibín [personal name]’ (logainm.ie #55935)

Date: 01/02/2026

Although February represents the first month of spring in the traditional Irish calendar, it generally remains wintery in feel with a bare cold countryside, with signs of spring’s new life only slowing appearing over the course of the month. One of the more common sights seen in many areas in February, particularly when the weather takes a cold turn, are flocks of plover and lapwing foraging in inland fields. For many of us this is the epitome of winter! And the Irish name for the plover, feadóg, is not at all unusual in townland names around the country:

Barr na bhFeadóg ‘the (hill)top of the plovers’, the forerunner to Barnaveddoge (logainm.ie #33543) in Co. Louth and Barranafaddock (logainm.ie #50223) in Co. Waterford;
Reanaviddoge / Ré na bhFeadóg ‘the (level) ground of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #49267) in Co. Waterford;
Drummeennavaddoge / Droimín na bhFeadóg ‘the (little) ridge of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #35763) and Lisnaviddoge / Lios na bhFeadóg ‘the ring-fort of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #46994) in Co. Tipperary;
Slievenavadoge / Sliabh na bhFeadóg ‘the mountain of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #24511) in Co. Kerry;
Scranaviddoge / Screathan na bhFeadóg ‘the scree(-slope) of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #8291) in Co. Cork;
Moanaviddoge / Móin na bhFeadóg ‘the bog(land) of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #32448) in Co. Limerick;
Clonnnavaddoge / Cluain na bhFeadóg “the (wet) meadow, pasture of the plovers” (logainm.ie #18563), Glennavaddoge / Gleann na bhFeadóg ‘the valley of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #17682; #21153) and Graiguenavaddoge / Gráig na bhFeadóg ‘the village, hamlet of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #20318) in Co. Galway;
Log na bhFeadóg ‘the hollow of the plovers’, the forerunner to both Lagnavaddoge and Lugnavaddoge (logainm.ie #35704; #35982) in Co. Mayo;
Larganavaddoge / Learga na bhFeadóg ‘the hillside of the plovers’ (logainm.ie #29437) in Co. Leitrim.

We may remark that the plover is not confined to townland names derived from Irish: the surviving evidence for Ploverhill (logainm.ie #46021) in Co. Tipperary suggests that it is a late English-language coinage (‘Ploverhill’ 1807; the official Irish version is the translation Cnoc na bhFeadóg). Note furthermore that Irish feadóg need not always mean ‘plover’ in placenames. It is a diminutive of the word fead ‘whistle’, in reference to the characteristic call of the bird: see eDIL s.v. fet ‘(a) a whistling or hissing sound … pipe of birds … (b) a pipe used for blowing’. (In Modern Irish this root word fead can also mean ‘watercourse, gully’, more commonly found in placenames in the diminutive form feadán ‘stream’.) While the metaphorical meaning ‘a tall, thin (i.e., reed-like) woman’ is unlikely to be intended in placenames, it is salient to note that feadóg can also refer to the very common great horsetail (Equisetum telmateia). This range of senses can help us in trying to understand placenames on which our research is not yet complete, such as Kilnafaddoge (logainm.ie #50754), now within the town of Athlone in Co. Westmeath (discussed in The Placenames of Brawny & St. Peter’s by Dr. Aengus Ó Fionnagáin, forthcoming). If the first element is cill ‘church, grave yard’, Cill na bhFeadóg might mean ‘the church, burial ground of the plovers’, in reference to the children’s burial ground just over the townland boundary in Collegeland. (Note, however, that the feature in question is named Lissahearin Grave Yard (Disused) on the Ordnance Survey 25ʺ map.) On the other hand, the first element of Kilnafaddoge may be from Irish coill ‘wood’; as woodland is not the usual habitat of plovers, a placename based on coill would then perhaps more likely to be qualified by reference to some other secondary sense of feadóg.

Another Irish word for the plover, and other members of the lapwing family, is pilibín. Writing in November 1833, the Co. Kilkenny diarist Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin differentiated between the feadóg ‘grey plover’ and the pilibín ‘green plover’ on his list of nocturnal birds which, according to a rumour he had heard, are easier to hunt by the full moon: he names the heron, the snipe, the grey plover, the green plover, the wood cock (an chorr riasc … an naoscach, an fheadóg, an pilibín, an creabhar). (Ó Súilleabháin helpfully added the English names of the species for clarification.) As the name of a bird, pilibín is most likely derived from the proper name Pilibín, a gaelicization of the Anglo-Norman personal name/surname Philbin (diminutive of Philip). Compare the usage of siobháinín, a diminutive of the female name Siobhán < Anglo-Norman Joanne, in folk names for birds and insects, e.g. siobháinín glas ‘water wagtail’ [Ó Súilleabháin], siobháinín an bhóthair ‘pied wagtail’, siobháinín an chlúimh ‘hairy caterpillar’. The habit of giving birds personal names in England, e.g. Robin (redbreast), Jack (daw), seems only to date from the very late Middle Ages (see OED s.vv. jackdaw (1543), robin (c. 1400)); this may explain the absence of pilibín as a common noun in Irish townland nomenclature.

The proper name Pilibín (< AN Philbin), on the other had, does occur in placenames. One unambiguous English example is the townland name Philippintown (logainm.ie #53922) in the south Wexford barony of Bargy (see Logainmneacha na hÉireann IV: Townland Names of Co. Wexford). A number of Irish-language placenames also contain clear reflexes of the gaelicized personal name. In these cases is important to note that, unlike many other names introduced by the Anglo-Normans, Pilibín did not become fashionable among the Gaelic Irish; therefore, where it occurs in Irish-language placenames, the eponym is very likely to have been a gaelicized Anglo-Norman (Sean-Ghall):

Glenphilipeen / Gleann Philibín ‘the valley of Pilibín’ (logainm.ie #55935) in Co. Wicklow;
Curraghphilipeen / Currach Philibín ‘the marsh of Pilibín’ (logainm.ie # 49074) in Co. Waterford;
Ballyfilibeen (logainm.ie #11659) and Ballyphilibeen (logainm.ie #10638), from Baile Philibín ‘the town(land) of Pilibín’ in Co. Cork;
Kilphillibeen / Coill Philibín ‘the wood of Pilibín’ (logainm.ie #9983), also in Co. Cork.

In most instances, it is unclear whether Pilibín represents a personal name or a surname. This is not so in the case of Philibenstown (logainm.ie #33478) in Co. Louth, however, where we can be certain that we are dealing with a surname. The local Irish form of the name collected in 1836 was ‘Baile na bhPhilibineach’ [sic] [Baile na bhFilibíneach] ‘the town(land) of Na Filibínigh’, in which the final element denotes ‘persons with the surname Filibín < AN Philbin’.

By a strange twist, this gaelicized personal name brings us back around to plovers. The associated surname Mac Philibín, originally a patronymic meaning ‘son of Pilibín’, is common in Co. Mayo. It was identified by John O’Donovan as a branch of the Burkes; Woulfe considered them to have been ‘more probably a branch of the Barretts’ (Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall, p. 400). MacLysaght sided with O’Donovan, referring to the family as ‘one of the hibernicized branches of the Connaught Burkes’ (The surnames of Ireland (1985), p. 245). The main residence of the family was ‘the Castle of Doon, near Westport’ (Woulfe, loc. cit.): this is Dooncastle / Caisleán an Dúin (#36997), par. Aghagower. (Another MacPhilbins Castle SO is found in Toberrooaun / Tobar Ruáin (#36901), 5 km to the southeast; cf. Mac Gabhann, Logainmneacha Mhaigh Eo 1: Barúntacht Bhuiríos Umhaill.) While Philbin is the usual anglicized form of Irish Mac Philibín encountered today, during the language shift from Irish to English in Co. Mayo some households ‘translated’ their surname as Plover, resulting in a cluster of that version in the 1911 census return in the east of the county. The anglicization of Irish surnames during the language shift is a fascinating topic of study, and Plover < Mac Philibín is surely one of the oddest examples. Another more famous pseudotranslation from the west of Ireland, also referring to a bird, is Barnacle. This was adopted as an English form of the Irish surname Ó Cadhain ‘descendant of Cadhan (personal name)’, via the common noun cadhan ‘barnacle goose’ (eDIL s.vv. cadan, earlier cauth). Readers are left to work out for themselves the link which this little piece of onomastics provides between Ireland’s two most important prose authors of the 20th century, one writing in English and the other in Irish. In any case, we hope that by the end of February the weather will have improved to the extent that the plovers and lapwings will have returned to the coast, and the barnacle geese will be preparing to leave for their summer breeding grounds in the peaceful environs of Greenland.

(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill)

‘A plover or a Plover?’ Gleann Philibín / Glenphilipeen ‘the valley of Pilibín [personal name]’ (logainm.ie #55935)

‘A plover or a Plover?’
Gleann Philibín / Glenphilipeen
‘the valley of Pilibín [personal name]’ (logainm.ie #55935)