Dia dhuit.

Many years ago I wrote Hunter of the Light, a fantasy novel set in an alternate-ancient Ireland. A marvelous Irish-language scholar worked with me to ensure I got all my Irish place names, personal names, and phrases right.

When it came to the glossaries, arranging the Names and Phrases in proper alphabetical order was no problem. The Places glossary was a different story. I wasn't sure how to handle places that start with "An". Should An Baile Meánach be alphabetized under under 'A' or 'B'? Did An t-Ard Achadh start with "An," "Ar," or "T"?

Unfortunately, at the time, bigger problems (cover art, over-zealous proofreader) made it impossible for me to find out before deadline. It went to print with An Fharraige following An Earagail, and both filed under "An," rather than under "F" or "E".

With the rights back in my hands, I'm currently readying the book for re-release under my original title, The Hunter of Éirinn -- and this time, I'd like to get that glossary right.

Go raibh míle maith agat for your help in understanding the role of 'An' in place-names and how to put those place-names in alphabetical order. -- Risa

Just to clarify, Risa, are you asking whether An, the definite article, should be ignored when alphabetising place-names? I suppose so, based on practice in English. For example, you'd find "United Kingdom" and "USA" in the "U" section of dropdown menus despite the fact that the official names are "the United Kingdom of ..." and "the United States of ..." Looking on logainm.ie, they also appear to grey out the article in place-names beginning with either An or Na.

As for extensions of the question, like which letter should be considered the beginning of a name like An t-Ard Achadh, it should be the A of Ard. Again, see example of t being greyed out on logainm.ie. With that being said, there may well be a grammatical question over that particular example. Should it not be An t-Achadh Ard? If so, it should be alphabetised by the A of Achadh. I'll leave that to other forum members to comment on, but I think it's unusual with the article for the adjective to precede the noun, even in a place-name.

If I may comment on your "An t-Ard Achadh", it sounds a bit strange to me. Can't pinpoint why, (I think it's the fact that I see achadh as indefinite, but I'm not so sure).

"Ard an Achaidh" would seem better, in my opinion. Or even "Ard na hAchadh". These are in line with what I usually see in place names, but it's also easier to visualise.

I'm not sure if it's a hill that pertains to one field, or many.

In general, I'm not sure if we should count the article when listing places alphabetically. My instinct would be to do so though, I think the definite article in Irish is more important than the English counterpart is to English.

either (An t)Achadh Ard
or (An t)Ardachadh

ard (high) can be used as adjective or prefix

(both place names exist without article)

Go raibh maith agat as do chabhair.

To clarify -- yes, I want to know if the definite article An should be ignored in alphabetizing place names. As Ade says, in English we ignore "the" when alphabetizing places (the United States, the Azores), but liamo5 correctly notes that the Irish An seems to carry a bit more weight than "the", perhaps, in part, because An is always capitalized (An Lorgain), and the isn't (the Hebrides).

Your comments on An t-Achadh Ard shine a light on a problem I didn't know I had. Most of my place names are the names posted on Ireland's bi-lingual road signs. This particular example was a place name I requested from my Irish-language advisor. As most place names are, at their root, descriptive (An Chathair Dhonn, Dún na Bó), I wanted a descriptive name for an elevated bit of flatland where some characters are encamped.

So ... is there any consensus here? I think there is consensus that An t-Achadh Ard should be changed. I'm gravitating toward Labrás' (An t)Ardachadh suggestion, but what about his point that all these place names exist without An? Will my Irish pass muster if I drop the An entirely? If An Dubh-Linn becomes Dubh-Linn, and the other 31 (out of 114) place names undergo similar surgery? If it's cosmetic surgery, frankly I'd rather not. My goal with this book is to re-release it with glaring errors corrected, but not to re-write it.

I so appreciate you sticking with me on this topic.

Ooops, that's Labhrás, tá brón orm ...

I still don't see any reason to treat the Irish article differently to English. As I showed, logainm.ie ignores it also and they're more or less the authority on Irish place-names. It also acts just like any other definite article in the language, as do articles in English place-names. It can, for example, be replaced where necessary by prepositional pronouns, as in this example from the Irish Wikipedia entry for an Spidéal: Ar an taobh eile den Spidéal, "On the other side of an Spidéal".

As a side note, the an in place-names in Irish is not always capitalised, as you have suggested. Take a look again at the Irish Wikipedia entry for an Spidéal. The first line begins "Is baile é an Spidéal.



If most of your place-names are legitimate places, then you shouldn't have any problem with those ones. It might be worth running the few that were made up for you by the forum if you can remember which they were, just to get a second pair of eyes on them.

As for this particular example, if you like Labhrás' suggestion, (An t)Ardachadh, my personal preference would be to drop the article altogether, and just use Ardachadh. This sounds way more natural to me.



As regards dropping the an, that depends on the example. Obviously I wouldn't drop it from any legitimate place-names you've found and used which already had it. As for made up place-names, it's difficult to say without seeing the actual names you have. As a blunt generalisation, though, I think your Irish might be more likely to pass muster if you did drop the an at least as frequently as you use it. It is extremely common for Irish place names to not have an article as the first element, particularly in compounds where an adjective precedes a noun. Just look at your own example, Dubhlinn is the exact compound from which the Irish capital, Dublin, gets its anglicised name. By contrast, "an Dubhlinn" sounds weird to me. I would expect An Linn Dhubh instead if the article were to be used.

I don't think it's "cosmetic surgery". When people who know a language agree that something looks or sounds funny it's generally not merely aesthetic or personal preference, but because the language doesn't normally do that. That's not to say that whatever linguistic feature is in question is wrong or ungrammatical, or even that examples similar to it don't occur in the language. You just have to ask yourself if you're ok with place-names in your book sounding unusual to people who know the language, or is it worth changing. If, as you say, these are the minority of place-names you used, it shouldn't constitute anything like a rewrite. If you decide you're happy with them, then I'd say the advice you already got here is sound enough.

In any alphabetical list of Irish place-names I’ve seen, names starting with the article ‘An’ come between those starting with ‘Am’ and Ao’. But have a look at this: https://www.logainm.ie/download/gasaitear-na-heireann.. It’s in Irish and English.

I ‘ve just tried that link and it doesn’t work. Go to https://www.logainm.ie/en
- Select/tap on ‘Resources’ in the bottom right hand corner.
- Scroll down and select ‘Publications’
- Scroll down to ‘Gazetteer of Ireland’ and download the PDF
- Scroll down to page 4: ‘Alphabetisation of Irish language names’

The italicisation of the “disregarded letters” is for highlighting purposes only. The long list of placenames starts on page 7.

Yeah, so I discovered. See my edit to my post above ((which I was busy typing when you posted).