I was wondering if anyone knew anything about old Irish as I could be way off here but it looks to me as if the position of adjectives in Old Irish has moved? In modern Irish in most cases the description comes after the verb such as an fear glas - the green grass.

In old Irish place names however it seems to be the other way around for example: Fionn Glas - Bright green/ fair green. or Fingal - Fionn gal - Fair foreighner (Norse viking)

or say the name Doyle - Dubh gal - Dark Foreighner (Danish Viking)

Is there a reason for this or did adjectives suddenly decide to shift their position in a sentence? Interesting since even modern English seems to have shifted around to that way aswell?

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Caithimíd dul siar chun teacht aniar.

There was a bit of talk on this before:

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2147&p=19360&hilit=+germanic+language+#p19360
(Breandan's comments are at the bottom)

Lughaidh's thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1495&p=12825&hilit=+germanic+language+#p12825

Languages change over time. For whatever reasons, the post positioning of the adjective became fixed in Irish, more or less. I did read somewhere that cross-linguistically, there are correlations between certain features and having the adjective after the noun, but I forget what

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

Adjectives would be prefixed in compound names in particular, in most old Indo-European languages. But it doesn't mean it was natural and productive in Old Irish to put the adjective before, it's only in compounds which are peculiar words. And it ceased to be productive a long time ago (not even sure it was productive in Old Irish outside literary/poetic language).
Now those who create words often prefix stuff because it's more comfortable for English-thinking people like them!

Certain adjectives, though, have always been only prefixed: sean-, droch- and a few others (almost the same ones in all Celtic languages)

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

And some of those same adjectives can come before the noun in French as well, though often with an altered meaning. Celtic influence?

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

téadbhínn is a good one - "melodious, of a stringed instrument", literally "string-sweet".

anteposed (?) adjectives were the rule in Latin, so this is not a Celtic influence ; now, postposing adjectives is less normal in Romance languages, and that may come from a Celtic influence, because Celtic languages have put adjectives after nouns for a long time. Actually, most IE languages put the adjectives before ; putting them after is rather a Celtic speciality, and it's found also in certain Romance languages as I said. I dunno why Celtic languages put 99% of the adjectives after the noun, maybe an influence of a pre-Celtic language (Basque, which is quite certainly pre-IE, puts adjectives after too, now we can't know it there's a link between Basque and the languages that were spoken in the now-Celtic-speaking countries before the Celtic languages appeared there...)

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne