On the approach to May 2024 in our series of weekly notes on placenames at logainm.ie we highlighted the fact that the Irish word for the festival of Summer, Bealtaine, remains in common use in Irish up to the present day, generally in reference to the whole month of May (see logainm.ie Baile Maoilbhealtaine). The word also occurs in a handful of townland names including Lisbalting / Lios Bealtaine ‘(the) ring-fort of May’ (logainm.ie #48350) in Co. Tipperary, as well as Beltany / An Bhealtaine in Cos. Donegal (logainm.ie #16481) and Tyrone (logainm.ie #63248), along with Beltany Mountain / Sliabh na Bealtaine (logainm.ie #14425) in Co. Donegal and Tamnaghvelton / Tamhnaigh Bhealtaine ‘(the) grassy upland of May’ (logainm.ie #1417840) in Co. Armagh.
A more unusual example indirectly alluding to Bealtaine ‘May’ is Baile Maoilbhealtaine ‘the town(land) of Maoilbhealtaine’ in Co. Cork. Maoilbhealtaine is a very rare personal name of the same structure found in Maolphádraig < maol ‘servant’ of Pádraig (St. Patrick). This once-common method of forming personal names, which seems to have died out by the late medieval period, generally involved the use of maol + a saint’s name. However, by-names were also formed on the same model, as for example Maolanfa ‘servant of anfa (‘storm’)’, the source of the surname Ó Maolanfa (var. Ó Maolanfaidh), usually anglicized Melamfy, or similar. The personal name Maoilbhealtaine belongs to the latter category. The townland name Baile Maoilbhealtaine was anglicized as Maytown, which, of course, does not give the full story, as the fact that it contains a personal name has been lost in the translation. There are two other townlands named Maytown in Ireland, one in Co. Wexford and one in Co. Armagh. However, neither appear to have any connection with the month of May. Maytown in Wexford seems originally to be an English formation from mead ‘meadow’ + town (see Logainmneacha na hÉireann IV: Townland Names of Co. Wexford), while the etymology of Maytown in Armagh is even more opaque and remains unclear (see placenamesni.org: Maytown).
There are also a small number of townlands called Mayfield in English, e.g. Mayfield or Ballynagalliagh / Baile na gCailleach (logainm.ie #25175) in Co. Kildare; Mayfield or Rocketscastle / Gort Ardach ‘field of Ardach’ (where Ardach was itself a placename) (logainm.ie #49141) in Co. Waterford; Mayfield / Lios Mhic Fheorais ‘the ring-fort of Mac Fheorais’ (logainm.ie #36128) in Co. Mayo (discussed below); and the well-known district of Mayfield / Baile na mBocht ‘the town(land) of the poor’ (logainm.ie #129588) to the northeast of Cork City.
As can be seen by their Irish names, none of these Mayfields are translations or pseudo-translations, as was the case with Co. Cork’s Maytown < Baile Mhaoilbhealtaine. Rather, they are late 18th- or early 19th-century English creations deriving from house names (see Mayfield (House), Mayfield Cottage). The Irish name found in Mayfield or Ballynagalliagh / Baile na gCailleach ‘the town(land) of the nuns’ (logainm.ie #25175) in Co. Kildare doubtless refers to this townland having once been in the possession of the ‘Nunnery of Kildare’ (Irish Monastic Possessions, 1540-1541, p. 146). Baile na mBocht ‘the town(land) of the poor’ (logainm.ie #129588), the original Irish name of Mayfield in Cork, was also ecclesiastical land, possibly part of the estate of Saint Stephen’s of Cork (see Calendar of Patent Rolls, p. 244b). The names Baile na mBocht ‘the town(land) of the poor’ and Baile Bocht ‘town(land) of (the) poor’ generally appear to apply to ecclesiastical land that had been set aside for the needy (see Logainmneacha na hÉireann IV: Townlands in Co. Wexford, s.n. Ballybought / Baile Bocht, p. 232). The Irish name of Mayfield or Rocketscastle / Gort Ardach ‘field of Ardach’ (logainm.ie #49141) in Co. Waterford does not refer to any ecclesiastical foundation, but apparently implies that this Gort was part of a larger area called Ardach. The earliest attestation to the alias Rocketscastle is ‘Rockwells Castle’ in the Civil Survey of 1654, at which time it was home to ‘Richard Strang … Irish Papist’ (p. 106). The original name of Mayfield (logainm.ie #36128) in Co. Mayo, namely Lios Mhic Fheorais ‘the ring-fort of Mac Fheorais’, is particularly interesting (see F. Mac Gabhann, Logainmneacha Mhaigh Eo, vol. 7). The name Mac Fheorais is technically a patronymic, meaning literally ‘the son of an individual named Feoras’. (Feoras is an alternative form of Piaras, the gaelicized version of Anglo-Norman Piers.) However, Mac Fheorais was also adopted as a surname by the gaelicized (de) Bermingham family (see P. W. Woulfe Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall). Senior branches of this family were located at Carrick / Carraig Fheorais ‘the rock of Feoras (by metonymy, the de Berminghams)’ (logainm.ie #25517) and Russellswood / Coill an Ruiséalaigh (logainm.ie #25523) in Co. Kildare, and in Ballinabrackey / Buaile na Bréachmhaí ‘the boley of the wolf-plain’ (logainm.ie #133201), Castlejordan / Caisleán Shiurdáin (logainm.ie #38936) and Longwood / Maigh Dearbhaí (logainm.ie #38954) in Co. Westmeath (see Analecta Hibernica 18 ‘The O Clery Book of Genealogies’). Further west, their presence in Connaught was so strong that part of Co. Galway actually became known as ‘Bermingham’s country’ (E. MacLysaght, More Irish Families, p. 33). It is unsurprising, therefore, that Ordnance Survey fieldwork in 1838 found that Mayfield / Lios Mhic Fheorais in Co. Mayo was locally understood to contain this surname.
As to the English house names from which the other examples of Mayfield derive, the original naming motivation may simply have been the connotations of summer that May invokes. Indeed, Mayfield still has great cachet in the modern Anglosphere. It occurs frequently in the names of streets and housing estates developed in 20th-century Ireland, with many examples found in the streetscapes of Cos. Cork, Dublin, Kilkenny, Limerick, Louth, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford (see sráidainm.ie) along with Cos. Antrim and Down (see placenamesni.org).
Note finally that some instances of Mayfield in placenames in England appear to derive from the mayweed, a most charming plant with daisy-like flowers. For example, Mayfield in East Sussex is derived from ‘Magavelda … “Open land where mayweed grows”. O[ld] E[nglish] mægthe + feld’ (Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names). (Note that Mayfield in Staffordshire appears to be from ‘Medevelde … Matherfeld … “Open land where madder grows”. O[ld] E[nglish] mæddre [‘madder’] + feld’.) This plant is known in Irish as lus anainn or, lately, lus Bhealtaine (téarma.ie). However, the English name mayweed is not common in the vocabulary of modern Hiberno-English and none of the examples of Mayfield in Ireland are likely to refer to this plant.
For more information on Bealtaine in Irish and Scottish placenames see: Kay Muhr, ‘Bealtaine in Irish and Scottish Place-names’, The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 10. https://clog.glasgow.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JSNS/article/view/134/162
(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Justin Ó Gliasáin)