Tara, County Down

Background

In Cormac’s Glossary (10th-century), and in LL (12th century) the opinion is expressed that the Irish word 'temair (Mod. Ir. teamhair) means any high place, eminence, hill from which a view can be had and that it is borrowed from a Greek word temoro’. The Greek origin was rejected by the modern scholar Vendryes (LÉIA s.v. temair), although the noun teamhair was clearly understood by Irish scribes and glossators in the medieval period to mean a conspicuous or eminent height, a view subsequently shared by O’Donovan, Hennessy (1889:v), and Joyce (i 294-6), in addition to the editors of DIL (s.v. temair). However, Wagner (1979, 26), in his discussion of the identification of the Earth-goddess with sacred hills and the dual function of life and death, took Teamair to mean ‘the dark one’, stating: ‘It is almost certain that the root tem- (cf. Old Irish temel ‘darkness’) from which we can derive Temair, is also contained in the name of the river Themes [modern Thames, London] cf. Sanskrit tamasa- ‘dark-coloured’. Thus Temair would appear to derive from a root tem- ‘dark’, possibly a reference to the inner hill, although Harris (Harris Hist. 131) describes Tara in the Ards as ‘an inconsiderable place’.  However, it seems that the term teamhair came to be understood as ‘eminent height’ in ordinary spoken Irish from as early as the Old Irish period, although it has since disappeared from the everyday vocabulary of modern Irish. There is no significant height in the townland of Tara.  However, there is a conspicuous ring fort named Tara Fort and this may be the feature from which the townland is named.

Regarding the etymology of the element teamhair and its distribution in Irish place-names, see the contributions to The Kingship and Landscape of Tara (ed. Edel Bhreathnach, Dublin, 2005) by Dónall Mac Giolla Easpaig ('Significance and Etymology of the Placename Temair', 423-48) and Nollaig Ó Muraíle ('Temair/Tara and Other Places of the Name', 449-477).

References

Additional Information

N.B. reassigned from Witter to Ballyphilip

Historical name form

Barony

Ards Upper

Parish

Ballyphilip

Parish in 1851

Witter

Townland

None

Place name ID

12608

Place name type

T