PERHAPS IF there had been public access six years ago to the painstaking work of the Kerry placenames survey, the vexed question about Dingle or Daingean, or Dingle/Daingean Uí Chúis would have been more speedily resolved.
It has taken a team of university graduates led by Dr Eamon Lankford, at his labyrinthine placename survey offices in the Mardyke in Cork city, 10 years of meticulous work to string together 80,000 placenames - in all forms and in Irish or English - into 53 bound volumes that now make up the new Kerry Placenames archive.
The archive is a work in progress with thousands more minor names to be collected from farmers, fishermen and locals .
All field names are included as are names of hills, slopes, hollows, lakes, submerged rocks, piers and channels and all house ruins, roads and building types.
The archive was launched this weekend at Muckross House Killarney by the current Minister for Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, Pat Carey and will be available for consultation in the Kerry County Library local history department in Moyderwell, Tralee.
In 1278 Dingle was Daingean Uí Chúise and in 1500 the town appears as the French sounding "Dingell de Couche" (Dingle of the sleep?) in documents of a local merchant. A form, Daingean de Cuise persists alongside the growing use of Dingle until at least 1892, according to the survey.
Modern shop names as well as housing estates all appear in the survey, the methodology for which was developed in 1976 on Cape Clear and the west Cork islands where 10,000 place names were collected by Dr Lankford, then a post-primary teacher.
Each volume records the location and description of the place or feature named and the name of the collector and other oral and literary data. Each townland within a parish is also given a map.
"Primary and post-primary teachers, their students, parents, farmers and fishermen and an older generation have all participated in great numbers in this effort to record local placename heritage. Public meetings, lectures and workshops emphasising local pride and sense of place were organised throughout the county," Mr Lankford said.
Lagely forgotten lane names - Pawn Office Lane and Ball Alley Lane are a testament to a life in Killarney in 1931 for instance; the Ardshanavooley 1970s housing estate in the town takes its name from 1603 when the Earl of Kenmare sited his dairy there.
There were some unusual names too: Caincín Shéartha, in the parish of Dromd in the Iveragh Gaeltacht is a reference to "the shape of Jeffrey's nose"; while elsewhere there is a townland called Baslicakane which means small basilica and derives from the Latin - which gives rise in Scottish Gaelic to the name Paisley, according to the survey.
Cork, whose survey is complete, has thrown up a massive 115 volumes and 100 boxes of submissions from the public.
The Minister said many of the placenames give a clear insight into the mindset, folklore, beliefs and day-to-day life in times of yore.
"These placenames will not survive unless they are used by people in their vernacular. The biggest challenge facing all of us is to encourage people to use them in their own areas. It would also help if these native names were used in newspapers, magazines and official documents as often as possible," Mr Carey said.