Talamh an Éisc: A New World Toponym in Irish-Language Sources*

Names of places reference language and location; place-name changes reflect issues of power, culture, and identity. Ternua, Terra Nova, Newfoundland, and La Terre-Neuve are all examples of the different names given to the most easterly island of Canada, the stretch of land off the American continent closest to Ireland. Its Irish version, Talamh an Éisc (the fishing grounds or territory), bestowed upon it by Irish speakers based on their experience of the island, is one that has been adhered to for centuries and is still in use in everyday speech in Ireland. While it may not seem unusual that speakers of a language would christen a new territory, this was actually not common in the Irish language, as existing foreign place-names were almost without exception left in their original form or transliterated. What is also certain is that it was not a practice for Irish speakers of North America to coin and maintain their own toponyms. Scottish Gaelic speakers in Canada were more successful in this regard. Scottish Gaelic was the third most widely spoken language in Canada around 1867, and some toponyms in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island reflect the linguistic origins of these settlers.¹ Although Irish Gaelic had hundreds of thousands of speakers in the United States by this time, as Kenneth Nilsen has shown, few linguistic traces of these early immigrants remain.² In effect the usage of Talamh an Éisc in Irish is a subaltern naming practice, as the Irish language never attained recognized status in Newfoundland nor indeed anywhere else in North America even though its many speakers were spread across the continent. This subaltern practice has parallels among other communities in other parts of North America, as in the use of unofficial place-names in Chinese by its speakers in San Francisco.³

Until now it has never been established when Talamh an Éisc was first coined, nor have Irish-language sources been explored to unearth detailed evidence of its usage. The earliest examples are found primarily in Irish-language manuscripts rather than published works. It is worth noting that there is a significant amount of manuscript literature in Irish; approximately 4,000 manuscripts written in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries survive (it is impossible to estimate how many more have been lost), and these are far more numerous and informative than contemporary published sources in the language.⁴ The manuscript tradition of this time was also married inextricably to a vibrant oral tradition; they coexisted side by side. Texts were preserved both orally and in manuscript form, as will be seen in some of the furnished examples.

The most fruitful sources for the history of this place-name are the Irish-language literary productions of the southeast of Ireland, as this was the region exhibiting the strongest historical connections with Newfoundland and a strikingly plentiful manuscript output. For example, Eoghan Ó Súilleabháin's research shows that in County Waterford alone between the years 1700 and 1900 roughly forty-eight poets and scribes (some fulfilled both roles) were active men of letters, with almost 130 manuscripts written in the county extant and preserved in various libraries.⁵ Likewise, County Kilkenny was home to at least twenty-four active poets/scribes between 1700 and 1800, with approximately sixty-five manuscripts extant, and over two hundred active scribes and poets lived in County Cork between 1700 and 1850, producing well over one thousand manuscripts.⁶ It is often in the margins, headings, and signatures of these manuscripts where relevant information is revealed.

Thus, in this contribution I wish to add to existing research on the transatlantic nature of Irish-language literary history and, through the focus on evidence of the usage of the name Talamh an Éisc, its uniqueness as a North American place-name in the Irish language. This analysis also pertinently includes manuscripts that were brought across the Atlantic Ocean to North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an important time in terms of historical immigration from Ireland, and a...