Ard a’ Chrapáin

Google StreetView comes in handy for many purposes but I suspect for placename research is not so common!

So here we have a name, Ard a’ Chrapáin collected about Dunlewey in Donegal and known to be somewhere on the extensive hills to the south, but where exactly? Ideally you’d meet someone who knows where it is and they’d point it out on the ground, so you can locate it on a map. But this is not often possible and describing the location of features from memory can be tricky. Photographs come in very useful here as they can shared in person or by WhatsApp etc and of course the local person will find it far easier to point out things on a photo. Key here is that it was mentioned that this place called Ard a’ Chrapáin was visible from a certain road. Enter Google and switch to StreeView, share the image and yes.. that’s it.

As to the name, ‘crap’ is a common Irish placename word for a ‘lump’ or a ‘bump’ . A ‘crapán’ is a small lump or bump. ‘Ard’ is a height, so Ard a’ Chrapáin means the ‘height of the little bump’ which is exactly how it appears looking up from the houses below. Since there are two ‘bumps’ and one is bigger than the other, so we have Ard a’ Chrapáin Mór and Ard a’ Chrapáin Beag.

This simple relevance and relationship between Irish placenames and the land, the language and us the citizens is precisely why so called ‘minor placenames’ should be recorded and noted where they apply.

#eastwestmapping