DAIRINE NI CHEALLAIGH,
Madam, - One of the earliest discussions concerning the various issues raised by Liam Ó Cuinneagáin's (February 7th) and Donal Flynn's (February 14th) respective stances is to be found in Plato's Cratylus. On an extremely superficial level, we might say that Donal Flynn is arguing in favour of the arbitrary nature of the sign, Liam Ó Cuinneagáin against.
However, I cannot imagine that the definition proposed by the well-meaning Mr Flynn will be of much help to Mr Ó Cuinneagáin. How, for example, does it account for the fact that the following "combination of vocal sounds" - dog - can refer to both my neighbour's collie and my labrador, even though one answers to the "name" Bob and the other Betsy. Neither does it explain why, this year - or any other, for that matter - Irish parents are unlikely to be choosing the names Osama or Saddam for their babies. Would Mr Flynn have thanked his parents if they had called him Marlon, Rudolf, Winston or Adolph?
To pretend that a name (common or proper, or both) is nothing more than "the particular combination of vocal sounds employed as the individual designation of a single person, place or thing" ignores the fact established by, among others, Saussure, that words are also psychic units that not only denote (designate) but connote (carry with them variable ranges of association). This explains why Cathair na Mart and Westport (both motivated or meaningful) cohabit harmoniously and will continue to do so, while the fact that Cobh was once, for a short period, called Queenstown has been long forgotten. It also explains the distress I feel at the disappearance from maps and signposts of Tamney or Tamhnaighe (according to Dineen "a cultivated or arable spot in a waste"), recently replaced by Moin Séarlas, a perfectly correct translation for Mountcharles.
If our feelings, values and sense of identity were not inextricably tied up with the names we agree on for persons and places, nobody would object to a general renaming of all our place-names in a more rational way: Leinster-one (Dublin), Leinster-two (Dún Laoghaire), Ulster-one (Belfast), and so on. - Yours, etc.,
DAIRINE NÍ CHEALLAIGH, Mountcharles, Co Donegal.