List of Iona place-names beginning with 'D'

Dabhach

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Coastal
Grid reference: NM2908626278
Certainty: 1
Altitude: m
Elements: G dabhach
Translation: 'the vat'

Dìg Mhòr

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2853024727
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 26m
Elements: G dìg + G mòr
Translation: 'the big ditch'

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2689223828
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 6m
Elements: G dìg + G an + G machair or en A’ Mhachair
Translation: 'ditch of the Machair'

Draoighnean

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV), Iona (IOX)
Classification: Vegetation
Grid reference: NM2913825544
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 4m
Elements: G droighnean
Translation: '(black)thorn thicket'

Druim an Aoinidh

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2572422362
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 60m
Elements: G druim + G an + G aoineadh
Translation: 'ridge of the steep promontory'

Druim an Fhaing

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2753322844
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 51m
Elements: G druim + G an + G fang
Translation: 'ridge of the sheep-pen/fank'

Druim Dhùghaill | Dugald’s Ridge

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2734822390
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 57m
Elements: G druim + pn Dùghall
Translation: 'dugald's ridge'

Druim na Cruaiche

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2682623523
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 7m
Elements: G druim + G an + G cruach
Translation: 'ridge of the (hay)stack/heap'

Dubh-Chorr

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Island
Grid reference: NM2509221721
Certainty: 1
Altitude: m
Elements: G dubh + G corr
Translation: 'the black/dark point'

Dubh-Sgeir

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Island
Grid reference: NM2500721821
Certainty: 1
Altitude: m
Elements: G dubh + G sgeir
Translation: 'the black/dark skerry'

Dùn Bhuirg

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV), Iona (IOX)
Classification: Antiquity, Relief
Grid reference: NM2649924630
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 17m
Elements: G dùn + en *Borg
Translation: 'hill of Borg'

Dùn Chalbha

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV), Iona (IOX)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2807325737
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 6m
Elements: G dùn + en Calbha
Translation: ‘hill of Calbha’

Description:

A large, prominent hillock located at the north end of Iona. For pronunciation see TAD ID 84012 part 1 41:45.

It is not clear if this feature takes its name from Eilean Chalbha or the croft of Calva. All attested forms post-date the creation of the crofts in 1802, so either interpretation is plausible. The translation provided by D. Munro Fraser, Dun of Calva’ may imply that he believed it to have been derived from the croft name. However, considering that the northern stretch of land surrounding the croft became synonymous with the name Calbha ~ Calva, this is likely the reason for the transfer of the name to several topographical features.

Dùn Ì

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV), Iona (IOX)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2840325235
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 100m
Elements: G dùn + en Ì ~ Iona
Translation: 'hill of Ì (Iona)'

Description:

The name is transparent: ‘the hill of Iona’, this being the single most obvious hill on the entire island. It rises to 100 metres near the north end of the island; the next highest ground on the island is further south, at the summit of Druim an Aoinidh.

It is worth commenting on the use of dùn in this name to refer to a hill on which there is no evidence of any fortification. In Old Gaelic dún meant ‘fort, fortified dwelling, strongly enclosed place’ (DIL). It did not originally have the meaning ‘heap, hill, mound’ and such like, but it later acquired that meaning in Scottish Gaelic, while not doing so noticeably in Irish Gaelic. What might be the explanation for this dialectal difference? Why did the meaning of the word drift in Scottish Gaelic, and when did this drift take place? (There is some brief discussion of this dialectal difference in Aidan MacDonald, ‘Caiseal, Cathair, Dùn, Lios and Ràth in Scotland: 1’, in The Bulletin of the Ulster Place-Name Society, series 2, 2 (1980-81), 30-39.)

It may be that we can see signs of the beginning of the drift as early as the seventh century in the name that Adomnán gives the hill in his Vita Columbae. As he often did, Adomnán translated whatever Gaelic name he had for the hill into Latin, and rendered it as munitio magna, ‘the big fort’, in a story about a disease-bearing cloud and a miracle. This suggests that it likely had the Gaelic name *Dún Mór. But this hill does not have any fortress archaeology on it – at least none that has been detected. It is possible that it might have had some fortification in the seventh century, justifying the term dún as a name, but there is no archaeological evidence for it, and no historical reference to any such construction having existed. An alternative explanation is that the drift in meaning, from ‘fort’ to ‘hill’, had already begun to take place in Scottish Gaelic. If Adomnán knew the hill as *Dún Mór, being Irish he would naturally have translated it as munitio magna. But given that there seems to have been no actual fort, it may be that local Gaelic usage had already adopted the extended meaning of ‘hill’ to create that name.

It is worth noting that the Welsh dictionary GPC gives for din ‘hill, height, fortification’ (see also Alan James, ‘The Brittonic Language in the Old North’, s.v. dīn). We know that Iona had several churches in Pictland in the seventh century, which would have provided plenty of opportunity for the Gaelic-speaking monks of Iona to have been influenced by a cognate Pictish word such as a hypothetical *dīn, with the same meaning of both ‘hill’ and ‘fortification’, to influence the way they used Gaelic dún. Iona also had monks in Northumbria in the seventh century (and English monks on Iona in the sixth century if we can trust VC iii, 10 and iii, 22) in whose native Old English dūn meant ‘mountain, hill’ and this may also have influenced Iona’s usage of OG dún.

Manus O’Donnell’s name for the hill in 1532, An Daingean Mór, occurs in his rendering in Irish of the story from Vita Columbae. This name is probably simply a translation back into Gaelic of Adomnán’s munitio magna, ‘big fort’; daingen means ‘stronghold, fastness, fortress’ etc. (see DIL). It is impossible to tell whether O’Donnell knew of a Gaelic name for the hill, the hypothetical *Dún Mór, but it is unlikely, otherwise we might have expected him to use that name in his Gaelic Life of Colum Cille.

Roderick MacLean, writing a few years later (1549), also recounts the miracle story from the hill-top as told by Adomnán, but this time in his own Latin verse rendering. He calls the hill Collis Yaei ‘the hill of Iona’, which may in fact be a rendering not of munitia magna, but of Dùn Ì ‘the hill of Iona’. MacLean knew the island very well, having been to school there, and later becoming Dean of the Isles. He must have known the local Gaelic name for the hill, and his Collis Yaei strongly suggests that he knew it as Dùn Ì.

It is worth pointing out that The OS Name Books 37, 3 refers to this hill as ‘A prominent rocky Knoll, the highest, and most conspicuous on the island, and situated at its north eastern extremity. Meaning “Hill of the Island”’. This ‘hill of the island’ explanation is almost certainly mistaken. It depends on the popular misconception that the island name Ì is simply the Gaelic word ì ‘island’, but that word is itself a loan-word from Old Norse ey ‘island’, and as Iona was called Ì before Norse-speakers arrived here in the late eighth century, this cannot be the origin of the island-name.

Dùn Làraichean

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2616421895
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 22m
Elements: G dùn + en Làraichean
Translation: 'hill of Làraichean'

Dùn Mhanannain

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2664225060
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 12m
Elements: G dùn +

Dùn nam Manach

Kilfinichen & Kilvickeon (KKV), Iona (IOX)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NM2859824530
Certainty: 2
Altitude: 24m
Elements: G dùn + G an + G manach
Translation: 'hill of the monks'

Description:

It is hard to locate the feature named Dùn nam Manach with any confidence. Ritchie (1930) sees it as an alternative name for Tòrr an Aba, the slightly raised ground to the west of the Cathedral, and this would appear to be the site identified by Macmillan in 1898. But this identification does not seem to match the description given by Martin Martin in 1703, which is also the earliest reference to the name: ‘built of Stone and Lime, in form of a Bastion, pretty high’. Tòrr an Aba certainly stands proud of the surrounding flat ground of the monastic enclosure (the area Adomnán calls the platea), but it is hardly ‘pretty high’, though admittedly that is a rather vague expression. Tòrr an Aba also fails to satisfy Martin’s description of it as giving ‘a View of all the Families in the Isle’. The identification of Dùn nam Manach with Tòrr an Aba is certainly problematic.

An alternative identification is suggested by Trenholme in 1909, who identifies the name with a spur of the hill on the west side of the road. The hill on the west side of the road is Cnoc nan Càrnan, and a rocky face (about NM2855824546) jutting out on its east side does give a better view of ‘the Families in the Isle’ as well as overlooking the monastery. Against this identification is the fact that there are no recorded remains ‘built of Stone and Lime’ on this hill, but it is possible that a casual observer might have looked at the natural rocky outcrops here and interpreted them as built structures. Since the evidence of our sources as to the location of the place is so confused, and the name only appears at the end of the seventeenth century, we can do little more than note its appearance and guess as to its origins.

Gaelic dùn originally meant ‘fort’, but the concept ‘fort of the monks’, whichever location we may prefer for it, is slightly strange: the monks of Iona are nowhere recorded as having a fort. The name may be regarded as an example of the early modern tendency, after the dissolution of the monastery on Iona in the sixteenth century, to romanticise or ridicule its monastic past, and to apply imaginary meanings to the physical landscape. An alternative translation would be ‘hill of the monks’, since in Scottish Gaelic the meaning of dùn expanded to include ‘heap, hill’ (see entry for Dùn Ì for further discussion).