In Ua Laoghaire's Bible manuscripts we read cnuc Síon nearly always (with I think one instance of Shíoin) and cnuc Sinaí for Mount Sinai. But in tearma.ie and in the Bible published in 1981 at Maynooth, it is Sliabh Shíón and Sliabh Shíonáí.

Is it possible to consider cnuc Síon and cnuc Sinaí as examples of apposition equivalent to "a Athair Peadar" (where Peadar is not lenited and not adjusted for the vocative)?

After all, it is not "Mount of Zion" or "Mount of Sinai", at least in the English, although you could argue that it does mean that.

And could more than one approach be taken? Eg the 1981 Bible could see it as meaning "Mount of Zion", whereas another approach could see "Mount Zion" as a single thing, with Zion in apposition?

I'm hoping Labhrás will have a view on this.

It is in any case an apposition.
There are (at least) 3 kinds of appositions in Irish:
- appositions in the same case as the antecedent: an tAthair Ua Laoghaire (gen.: Páirc an Athar Uí Laoghaire)
- appositions always in nominative case: an tAthair Peadar (gen. an Athar Peadar, voc. a Athair Peadar)
- appositions always in genitive case: Contae Chorcaí

Place names are, as far as I know, always the latter.
(Though I can't recall a place name in Ireland consisting of Cnoc and a real apposition. Mountain/hill names in Ireland are usually describing, assigning or similar. Some are obscure, e.g. Cnoc Daod. But this was probably originally assigning as well: Daghda's hill.)

So I assume Síon/Síón and Síonáí are in genitive case.

But you can't tell from their form (and what PUL had in mind):
As originally foreign names they don't change for case, so Síon in all cases.
Usually, definite nouns in genitive are lenited today. But in the older language, there are numerous examples without lenition. And names of foreign orign resist lenition as well-

This isn't a hard and fast rule, though. Various case forms of Sion have been used since at least the 8th century, and there seems to have been the same interplay between the palatalisation and non-palatalisation of the final consonant for about that long.

In the Amra Coluim-cille you get in faith De de deis Sion suidiath "The prophet of God has sat down on the south of Zion", glossed .i. suidestar for deis in tSióin nemda "he has sat down on the south of the heavenly Zion. Here, I believe both Sion and the later gloss form, in tSióin, are in the genitive case, but represented completely differently.

You also get a dative in Amrad inso ind rig ro dom-rig firdib-snaidfe Sione "this is the eulogy of the king who made me king, who will convey us to Zion". This too is glossed ron-snáidfe co sliab Sion nó co Sion nemda "he will protect us to Mount Zion or to heavenly Zion". Oddly, in the first example, it was the - presumably older - main text which retained the "nominative" form in a genitive construction, while the presumably later gloss showed a specific "genitive" form. In this case it's the main text which shows a distinct dative form. The two forms in the gloss appear to be in the expected accusative case following the preposition co, though perhaps you would still expect a genitive form of Sion after sliab in co sliab Sion.

In more recent examples palatalisation seems to be the rule for final consonants, albeit, with continued variation in lenition. Logainm gives Shióin as the genitive for places named Sión in counties Waterford and Wexford, an tSiáin as the genitive of An Sián between Leixlip and Maynooth (anglicised Sion and attested in sources going back to 1752). There's also a Cnoc Shióin in Kilkenny, a Cnoc Sióin in Waterford, a Bóthar Chnoc Shióin in Cork and Waterford, as well as Ascaill Chnoc Sióin and Ardán Radharc Chnoc Sióin in Waterford. And, of course, djwebb also mentioned thinking there was one instance of Shíoin in PUL too, but this just makes his typical use of cnuc Síon even more interesting.

At the least, these forms show that cnoc is common in place of sliabh when referring to Mount Zion. I do have doubts as to the antiquity of some of the examples though. The likes of Ardán Radharc Chnoc Sióin seem particularly contrived.



It's never really possible in the Early Irish to say that the lack of a mark of lenition, particularly on an S, means that it was not lenited. Often marks of lenition were omitted where we know lenition would have taken place. In fact, the presence of t in the genitive form above, in tSióin, would suggest that the S would have to be lenited. If there were consistent lack of lenition being marked in examples from the Early Modern period, that might be more telling, but I still wouldn't rely on not seeing it as indicative that it wasn't intended.

My guess would be that PUL was using some sort of long-established, compound proper noun when he writes cnuc Síon, which preserves a historical lack of distinction between nominative and genitive forms, but I'd be very interested to know the context in which he uses the form Shíoin now to see if this breaks that pattern.

Thank you, Labhrás and Ade.

Well, cnuc Shíoin is in 4 Kings 19:31:
Óir a Iérúsalem raghaidh iarsma amach, agus an ní a sábhálfar a cnuc Shíoin

"A" here means "as" , so "as Iérúsalem" and "as cnuc Shíoin".

Ua Laoghaire wrote in one of his letters that he constantly received letters addressing him as "a Athair Pheadair", and he had to write back and explain that he had no children and did not who "the father of Peter" was. Because he should be addressed as "a Athair Peadar".

"Father Peter" is different from "city of Cork", in that the second has a genitival relationship. You could say this is shown by the "of" in the English, although English idiom doesn't have to match entirely the Irish constructions.

Cnuc Shíoin seems to me to be Mount of Zion. But I'm not sure if I'm overly focusing on the English word "of", and maybe "Cnuc Síon" is ultimately regarded as (usually, in hundreds of other passages in the Bible) as a single unit?

appositions in the same case as the antecedent - is this only in the case of surnames? Or maybe most of the actual clear examples are of surnames?

What case is Easpag in in "the house of the Lord Bishop"? Tigh an Tiarna Easpag or Tigh an Tiarna Easpaig? EDIT: I've realised it is always Tiarna Easpaig, but how does that fit into the wider grammatical rule? I think this is because it is comparable to phrases like "amadán mná".

Ua Laoghaire frequently has things like: Tá obair an Athar Eóghan déanta and Bhíomair-ne tamall maith ag feitheamh leó ag dorus tíghe an Athar Tomás mac Muiris.

Now realising that cnuic could also be in the genitive, I've searched for cnuic Shíóin and found this in Isaiah 18:7:

San am san tabharfar bronntanas chun Tiarna na sló, ó phobal bhriste, stracaithe as a chéile: ó phobal uathásach, ná raibh aon phobal eile ’na ndiaidh, ó phobal ag súil, ag súil go ngeóbhfí de chosaibh iontu, go raibh na haibhní tar éis a dtalún do lot, chun áite ainme Thiarna na sló, chun cnuic Shíoin.

And in Isaiah 29:8:

sin mar a bheidh slua na nGínte atá tar éis troda in aghaidh cnuic Síon

The manuscripts are a raw draft of course - Ua Laoghaire was expecting someone else, like Richard Fleming, to tidy them up, and so one of those above is an error.

In Bedell's Bible, it is cnoc Síon or sliabh Síon without lenition or genitive marking even following declined forms of sliabh/cnoc.
Lenited Shíon occurs in clann Shíon, ar son (imreasuin) Shíon, ingheann Shíon (though as well ingheann Síon) (and in vocative)
Genitive form Shíoin occurs twice: glóir Shíoin, neartmhar Shíoin

Thus, cnoc Síon is a nominative apposition here.


In ABN, it is cnoc/sliabh Shíón, no genitive Shíóin elsewhere.
So, here it is probably thought to be a genitive apposition (because of lenition).

If this helps at all, Diarmaid Ó Sé wrote (on page 63 of GChDh):



This addition is probably futile in comparison to that which Ade and Labhrás have already added, but I thought it might be worth putting in just to provide any further references to other lenited place names: as Ó Sé said, for the most part the lenition is absent except for in some certain cases which he doesn't go into detail on.

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I'm an intermediate speaker of the Corca Dhuibhne dialect of Irish and also have knowledge on the old spelling
Soir gaċ síar, fé ḋeireaḋ thíar