Michelle's prize for place names research

A prize of €500 for an article on mould-breaking research into our place names will be presented to Michelle Dunne at the launch of Ríocht na Midhe 2018 by Bishop Michael Smith in Navan this evening. Her prize-winning article brilliantly spotlights how our local place names arise. Places were named from people, events and animals which had significance for our forbears, who then sought to commemorate them by naming places after them.

Hence our ancestors recorded their intimate identity in the landscape which enfolded them. Michelle shows that this naming process is a continuing one. Landscape features, whether natural or man-made, such as fields, wells, roads and hills are still being called after notable people or events in local experience. Even very minor place names may commemorate notable aspects of local life and so are a valuable source of information on the intimate experience and development of the community. The author has already collected and analysed hundreds of place names. In this article, she draws also on the rich resource of the Meath Field Names Project.

Michelle Dunne, a native of Fennor, Co Westmeath, is currently engaged in research at Fiontar, Dublin City University, on a series of Digital Humanities projects encompassing folklore (www.duchas.ie) and (minor) place names (www.logainm.ie,  www.meitheal.logainm.ie). She was awarded the M.A. in Nua-Ghaeilge in 2013 from Maynooth University. Her thesis provided an historical, linguistic and folkloristic study of the civil parish of Rathconnell in Co Westmeath. At the heart of her examination was an analysis of the area's rich substratum of minor place names, their associated folklore, and the linguistic evidence they furnished for the dialect of Irish once spoken in Westmeath. She collected and mapped the locations of 378 minor place names from ten townlands in her locality. Michelle's fascinating article will be published in the 2019 edition of Ríocht na Midhe.
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The award of this Ríocht na Midhe Prize for Research is part of a long-term initiative by Meath Archaeological and Historical Society to attract talented young scholars to work on the  rich heritage of Meath/Westmeath, and to support and honour their achievements. The launch of Ríocht na Midhe 2018 takes place in the Ardboyne Hotel, Navan, Wednesday 21 February at 6.30pm.