Immediately speaking with John Creedon, it’s clear he has a great interest in the origins of people and place.

Irish Country Living has only greeted him with a simple, ‘Hi John, how’re you getting on?’ when he is trying to decipher the accompanying twang.

“You’re Cork or Kerry are you?” he asks intrigued.

Close but no cigar, west Limerick.

After this revelation he enquires what part. It turns out he knows it well and says that often it can be tricky to ascertain exact accents where north Cork, north Kerry and west Limerick meet.

Interestingly, he then deduces that Limerick city and Cork city brogues are more akin than their country counterparts.

John grew up in Cork city, but as he puts it himself: “My stock is all rural. All my roots are around west Cork. My summers were spent saving hay, working with horses, thinning, weeding and all that sort of stuff.”

This interest in place, people and their vernacular comes from his father. “It was one thing I was curious about anyway, I wasn’t curious about my homework, but I was curious about maps, place names and words,” he explains.

“My father was a fierce wordsmith, he was a fierce man for making up words. He spoke Latin, Greek, English and Irish.

“He grew up in a breac-Gaeltacht (specked-Gaeltacht).

"My grandfather was a native-Irish speaker and he himself was a beautiful Irish speaker.

"He wore a Fáinne all his life, even though he wouldn’t have been dyed-in-the-wool or he wouldn’t have been fanatical about it. He would as easily make up words. It’s definitely from him I get it.

“I can hear it in the car still, him talking to himself. I can just hear my dad saying, ‘Kilkenny, Cill Chainnigh, who’s church was that now? One of the Kenny’s, he might have been Jon Kenny’s cousin’. He would be on about stuff like that the whole time. I find myself doing the same thing.”

Preserving place

John has been working with RTÉ for over 30 years now, first entering the national broadcaster by winning a public competition. For 13 years he was based in Dublin, but in 2000 got the chance to return to Cork, where he now broadcasts his weeknight show on RTÉ Radio 1 from.

Much of John’s TV work with RTÉ in recent years has indulged his passion for place, and his new series Creedon’s Atlas of Ireland is no different. Its focus is on place names, namely how Irish place names were anglicised in the 1820s, their meaning, and efforts across the country to preserve place names.

John Creedon overlooking the Bogside in Derry city.

In one of the episodes, John visits Loch Con Aortha in Connemara, Co Galway. There are two noteworthy things with regard to this area. Firstly, Loch Con Aortha as a name. Loch is lake as Gaeilge, con a hound, aortha a shepherd. Loosely it translates as sheepdog lake. Second, is the communal effort the people of this village made to preserve their local place names.

“What was interesting here was the connection Irish people have with their land. They were heartbroken that all the names they had in memory are going. As you know yourself, not only does a town or a village have a name, but a rock would have a name,” says John.

Every little rock, twist and turn in the landscape has a name

“I was speaking with one of the locals and he said, ‘That rock over there, some of us would still know it as Carraig a Capín’. In other words the rock with the cap. This was because there’s earth on top of it where grass has sprouted and it looks like someone’s head with a cap on it.

“Every little rock, twist and turn in the landscape has a name. As your man said to me, ‘They’re dying out. There’s nobody to hand them on to, they’re going to disappear’.

“I was getting sentimental about all this as well, but he told me everyone from the village when they came home on holidays from London, Boston or wherever, they all went to work and logged every single crossroads, rock, lake and puddle they had a name for.

“They put them online with the coordinates. So in a 1,000 years’ time when anyone says, ‘What was that called?’ they will be able to go online and say, ‘That rock was called Carraig a Capín’.”

Such is John’s passion for people and place, he completed a diploma in regional studies in University College Cork (UCC). This hit on a lot of his interests, from place names to oral narrative and even the evolution of soccer in Ireland.

I have a great love of place and that includes other people’s places. It doesn’t have to be my place

Since his youth, League of Ireland soccer has been an interest of John’s – he informs me soccer first took hold here in garrison towns, where some of the strongest teams still are today.

You see, his fascination with place stretches beyond just name.

“I have a great love of place and that includes other people’s places. It doesn’t have to be my place. If I’m in Italy or Sri Lanka, I’m fascinated by how people organise themselves, how they name their places or how they dress their kid. Just the whole damn thing you know.”

The final episode of Creedon’s Atlas of Ireland airs this Sunday at 6.30pm. All three installments will be available on RTÉ Player.

Animals and place names

Many place names across the country are connected with agriculture and animals. In one of the episodes, John travels to Castlerea Mart to explore this link.

  • Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim as Gaeilge is Droim Seanbhó, meaning “hump” or “hill of the old cow”.
  • Poulacapple, Co Tipperary as Gaeilge, is Poll an Chapaill, meaning “the horse’s hollow”.
  • The word ‘madra’ meaning dog also appears in many place names. However, it is most likely this actually refers to wolves.

  • Limavady, Co Derry, as Gaeilge is Léim an Mhadaidh, meaning “the jumping dog”.
  • Gleanamaddy, Co Galway as Gaeilge is Gleann na Madadh, meaning “valley of the dogs”.
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