Information about Tawnnaharra Lough

Information from O'Donovan's Field Name Books

Standard Name:
Tawnnaharra Lough
Irish Form of Name:
Tamhnach Uí Eaghra
Translation:
Lough of Hara’s field
Civil Parish:
Other Forms of the Name with authority source (if provided) in italics:
Tawnnaharra Lough
Tamhnach Uí Eaghra
Townahara Lough Local name
Comment:
O’Hara’s field
Situation:
On the parish boundary, S. of Poulnacloghha townland

Information From Joyce's Place Names

Translation according to P. W. Joyce:
Tawin in Galway; Tamhan, a block, stump or tree-trunk. Like Cap, Cappa [reproduced below].
Cap, Irish Ceap, a stake, stock, or tree-trunk. Sometimes it is shortened from Cappa or Ceapach, an enclosed tillage-plot. See vol. i. p. 228, and vol. ii. p. 353 [reproduced below]. Ceapach [cappagh] signifies a plot of land laid out for tillage; it is still a living word in Connaught, and is in common use in the formation of names, but it does not occur in Ulster so frequently as in the other provinces. Cappagh and Cappa are the most usual anglicised forms; and these either alone or in combination, give names to numerous places. It has been often asserted, and seems generally believed, that Cappoquin (county Waterford) means "The head of the house of Conn"; but this is a mere guess; the name is a plain Irish compound, Ceapach-Chuinn, signifying merely Conn's plot of land, but no one can tell who this Conn was. Cappaghwhite in Tipperary is called after the family of White; Cappaghereen near Dunboyne, in Meath, withered plot; Cappanageeragh near Geashill in King's County, the plot of the sheep; Cappateemore in Clare, near Limerick city, is in Irish Ceapach-a'-tighe-mhoir, the plot of the great house; Cappanalarabaun in Galway, the plot of the white mare; Cappaghmore and Cappamore, great tillage plot. The word is sometimes made Cappy, which is the name of a townland in Fermanagh; Cappydonnell in King's County, Donnell's plot; and the diminutive Cappog or Cappoge (little plot), is the name of several places in Ulster, Leinster, and Munster. Stump or stake. The word smut, and its diminutive smután are used to denote a log, a stake, a stump of a tree. This is a pretty common element in names; and I suppose it was applied to places where some of the branchless stumps of an old wood, os some one remarkable trunk, still remained standing. Something like this last must have been the case in Smuttanagh near Balla in Mayo, which is called in Hy Fiachrach, Baile-an-smotáin the town of the stock or trunk; but the modern form, Smuttanagh, means a place full of trunks. The word appears in its simple form in Clashnasmut a little north of Carrick-on-Suir, the clash or trench of the trunks. But the diminutive is more common. There is a townland in Mayo, and another in Tipperary, called Gortnasmuttaun, the field of the stakes. Ballysmuttan (town of the tree-trunks) is a well-known place on the river Liffey, near Blessington; Toorsmuttaun in Galway (tuar, a bleachfield); Coolasmuutane near Charleville in Cork, and Lissasmuttaun near Portlaw in Waterford, the angle (cuil) and the lis or fort, of the trunk. Another word for a tree-stock, stake, or block, is ceap [cap], which is often used and applied in much the same sense as smut: cognate with Lat. Cippus, a sharp stake, and with Welsh cyff, a trunk. It generally appears in the anglicised form kip, which represents the genitive cip. In 1573, a battle was fought between two parties of the O'Briens of Thomond, at a place which the Four Masters call Bel-an-chip, the (ford-) mouth of the tree-trunk; the name is now Knockakip, which is applied to a hill on the sea-shore near Lahinch in the county Clare. There was an old ford over the Shannon, near Carrick-on-Shannon, which is mentioned several times in the annals, by the name of Ath-an-chip, a name having the same meaning as Bel-an-chip. It is probable that a large trunk of a tree stood near each of these fords, and served as a mark to direct travellers to the exact crossing. What gave name to Kippure mountain, from the slopes of which the rivers Liffey and Dodder run down to the Dublin plain, it is now hard to say with certainty; but probably it was so called from the remains of some large old yew, for the name exactly represents Cip-iubhair, the trunk of the yew-tree. Coolkip near Holycross in Tipperary, and Coolakip in Wexford, both mean the corner of the trunk. The c is often changed to g by eclipse, and then the word becomes gap in anglicised names. Gortnagap is the name of a townland near Tullaroan in Kilkenny; and there is another called Askanagap in the parish of Moyne in Wicklow - the former meaning the field (gort) and the latter the wet land (easga) of the trunks. Kippeen (cipín, little stick), one of the diminutives of this word, is well-known by all people having any knowledge of Ireland, as a popular term for shillelagh or cudgel; it gives name (though not exactly in this sense) to Kippin in Westmeath; also to Kippinduff in the same county, and Kippeenduff (black little trunk) near the village of Clara in King's County. With the termination ach (p. 3) we have Kippagh, the name of several townlands in Cork, a place full of stocks or tree stumps.

Townland Information

What is a townland?:
A townland is one of the smallest land divisions in Ireland. They range in size from a few acres to thousands of acres. Many are Gaelic in origin, but some came into existence after the Norman invasion of 1169
Townland:
Tawnnaharra Lough is in Poulnaclogha townland.

Information From Maps

Original OS maps at the Ordnance Survey of Ireland website.
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Tawnnaharra Lough
Information from the National Monuments Service.
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Archaeological map from the National Monuments Service