Date: 30/08/2025

The name of the townlands Ballyboggan North and Ballyboggan South in the old civil parish of Finglas – situated between modern Cabra, Glasnevin and Finglas – have been in the news recently. Earlier this year, a planned urban regeneration development in the area was described in an Irish Times editorial as having been given ‘the unlovely working title of Ballyboggan after a little-known local road’ (Irish Times (24-04-2025), our emphasis). Predictably, this comment sparked a discussion about the name of the development. A submission was forwarded to the local authority (Dublin City Council) suggesting that the name be changed from Ballyboggan to Hamilton, ‘after Ireland’s greatest mathematician, William Rowan Hamilton’ (see Submission: William Rowan-Hamilton). This submission noted that the bridge at Broombridge had been renamed Hamilton Bridge in 1958, and that in 2014 the then Minister of Transport announced that the name of the new Luas Depot would be Broombridge-Hamilton Depot. It could have gone further and mentioned the six streetnames in the vicinity of Broombridge that also commemorate the same eminent figure: Rowan Hamilton Court and Hamilton Square in Cabra; Hamilton Rise, Hamilton Way, Hamilton Walk and Hamilton View in Ashtown. It is safe to say that the official urban toponymy of the area has not been neglecting William Rowan Hamilton. Nevertheless, as the Irish Times now reports, the council seems to have changed the name of the new development to ‘Broombridge-Hamilton’ (Irish Times (23-08-2025), to go along with the six streets, the bridge and the Luas depot already bearing his name, giving us a scarcely imaginable number of nine (9) features named in his memory locally.

So why, exactly, would the placename Ballyboggan be considered so ‘unlovely’? Let us look at its underlying Irish form. The Irish versions of the administrative townland names Ballyboggan South and Ballyboggan North were declared as Baile Bogáin Theas and Baile Bogáin Thuaidh, respectively, in the Placenames (Co. Dublin) Order 2011, made by the then Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht under Part 5 of the Official Languages Act 2003. This order was based on research carried out by An Brainse Logainmneacha / The Placenames Branch (nowadays a section of the Department of Community and Rural Development and the Gaeltacht). Before the Minister signed the draft order, it was scrutinized by An Coimsiún Logainmneacha / The Placenames Commission and then submitted to the public for a three-month consultation period. (Note that no submissions were received in respect of Baile Bogáin Thuaidh and Baile Bogáin Theas during the public consultation period.)

As to the placename itself, the elements North and South represent a late administrative subdivision made by the Ordnance Survey in the 1840s, and of course the underlying placename we need to look at is simply Baile Bogáin / Ballybogan. The evidence is not entirely straightforward, but the Placenames Commission ultimately concluded that it was best reconciled with the Irish form Baile Bogáin ‘town(land) of/at (the) soft ground’. This is not the only interpretation possible. For instance, the groundbreaking Irish scholar John O’Donovan – who, at the current count, has only one (1) single street named in his honour in Dublin – suggested ‘baile an bhogáin’ [Baile an Bhogáin] ‘the town(land) of the soft ground’ when he analysed the name for the Ordnance Survey in 1840. This differs only slightly from the modern official form Baile Bogáin, which interprets the overall historical evidence – including references unavailable to O’Donovan in 1840 – as lacking support for the Irish genitive article an with required lenition of the initial consonant of gen. bogáin. As the members of the Placenames Commission were well aware, both of the features just mentioned are often omitted in anglicization, and as is so often the case they had to make a judgement call on which form to recommend in the draft placenames order presented for public consultation. Another derivation that had to be taken into account was Baile Uí Bhogáin ‘the town(land) of Ó Bogáin’, containing the Irish surname usually anglicized Boggan, but in that case again lenition of the initial of the final element would be anticipated.

The decisions that An Coiste Logainmneacha / Placenames Committee – the modern-day iteration of An Coimisiún Logainmneacha – have to make when considering the evidence and settling on the most appropriate form to recommend are sometimes very finely balanced indeed. When a specific Irish name is established as the legal version of a placename – and of course the State can only declare one legal Irish version for each of its official placenames – it is because the Placenames Committee considers, on the balance of the evidence, that this was the form most recently used by local Irish-speakers when Irish was still the community language of the place in question. Other derivations cannot always be ruled out, however, and one of the jobs of the Placenames Branch is to present the evidence underlying each placename and to provide the proper context of the officially recommended forms. (For example, we will see below that there is another Ballyboggan in Co. Meath for which none of the anglicized forms reflect lenited Bh-, but for which Irish attestations survive proving that the name was Baile Uí Bhogáin!)

In any case, for Ballyboggan (North, South) in Dublin, the overall evidence was deemed, on balance, to reflect an underlying Baile Bogáin. The bogán ‘soft ground’ (see FGB s.v. bogán, eDIL s.v. bocán) in question may well have been in the area of alluvial soil next to the Tolka River, prone to remaining soft long after the surrounding ground had dried out after flooding. It is also possible that the townland once contained other areas of soft ground obscured by the modern urban landscape. A number of other townland names across Ireland have been anglicized as Ballyboggan, but their original Irish precursors are not all the same. We mentioned that Ballyboggan (logainm.ie #38910) in Co. Meath derives from Baile Uí Bhogáin ‘the town(land) of Ó Bogáin (anglic. Boggan)’: the Annals of the Four Masters have ‘baile ui bogáin’ [gen.] (1447) and the corresponding Annals of Connacht have ‘a mBali .h. Bhogan’ (in which .h. represents Mod.Ir. Uí). The same surname also gave name to the townland of Ballybogan / Baile Uí Bhogáin (logainm.ie #16254) in Co. Donegal and the village of Clanabogan / Cluain Uí Bhogáin ‘the (wet) pasture of Ó Bogáin’ (logainm.ie #1167028; PNNI) in Co. Tyrone. In contrast, however, the townlands Ballyboggan and Bogganstown in Co. Wexford both appear to derive from Baile Uí Bheagáin ‘the town(land) of Ó Beagáin’, containing the unrelated surname Ó Beagáin, which also appears to have been anglicized Boggan in the southeast (see Logainmneacha na hÉireann IV: Townland names of Co. Wexford).

Of far more frequent occurrence than the surname Ó Bogáin in placenames is the common noun bogán ‘(area of) soft ground’. Ballyboggan (logainm.ie #20382) in the parish of Ahascragh in Co. Galway is from Baile an Bhogáin ‘the town(land) of the soft ground’, doubtless in reference to the bog in the western half of that townland. Evidence for a second Ballyboggan (logainm.ie #19834) in the parish of Monivea in the same county is more difficult to analyse, but its location as an island completely surrounded by cutover peat (see EPA soil maps) ultimately favours derivation from Baile an Bhogáin ‘the town(land) of (at) the soft ground’. Examples in which bogán occurs with generic elements other than baile ‘town(land)’ include Tawnawoggaun / Tamhnaigh an Bhogáin ‘the grassy (up)land of (in) the soft ground’ (logainm.ie #37443) in Co. Mayo and Turavoggaun / Tor an Bhogáin ‘the tall rock of (at) the soft ground’ (logainm.ie #46101) in Co. Tipperary. The latter name must refer to one of the rocky outcrops next to Moanavoggaun (< ?Móin an Bhogáin ‘the bog of the soft ground’), where there is a large peat bog.

Bogán ‘(area of) soft ground’ is also found as a generic element in its own right. In simplex form – that is to say, without any qualifying element – An Bogán ‘the soft ground’ is anglicized as Boggan or Boggaun in the names of townlands in Cos. Carlow (logainm.ie #3353), Galway (logainm. #19912), Kilkenny (logainm.ie #26705), Leitrim (logainm.ie #29021), Meath (logainm.ie #38231) and Tipperary (logainm.ie #46791). Two townland names in Co. Galway show the plural form Boggauns / Na Bogáin ‘the areas of soft ground’ (logainm.ie #18961; #20404). Examples with qualifying adjectives include Bogganfin / An Bogán Fionn ‘the fair, white soft ground’ (logainm.ie #42321) in Co. Roscommon, Lowpark / An Bogán Mór ‘the big area of soft ground’ (logainm.ie #18023) in Co. Galway, and Boggaunreagh / An Bogán Riabhach ‘the greyish, striped soft ground’ (logainm.ie #41518) in Co. Offaly. There is no shortage of townland names containing the element bogán ‘soft land’ in Ireland, and Ballyboggan in Co. Dublin is no outlier. (Regrettably, although the Placenames Branch has been researching the abovementioned placenames since the 1960s we do not appear to have any data indicating whether the local people consider them lovely or unlovely.)

We would point out finally that even though the earliest attested forms of Ballyboggan in Co. Dublin date from 1613, the placename itself is certainly far older. Unfortunately, the majority of Irish placenames cannot be traced back further than the beginning of the 17th century, due to the loss of historical documents. That the placename Baile Bogáin was coined when Irish was still the vernacular in this area is self-evident; as such, it is surely of deep local significance, both culturally and linguistically. Moreover, it is noteworthy that many Irish placenames such as Baile Bogáin refer to wet land where none is now present. ‘Improvements’ made by landowners in the generations following the mass dispossessions of the 17th century have obliterated countless wetlands from our landscape and often it is only the Irish placenames that recall features of this type. The name Ballyboggan / Baile Bogáin ‘town(land) of (at the) soft land’ – on the banks of the Tolka River on the northside of Dublin – is one of hundreds of such examples.

(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill)

• An Bogán/Boggan
• Baile Uí Bhogáin/Ballybogan
• Baile Bogáin Thuaidh/Ballyboggan North
• An Bogán Mór/Lowpark
• Na Bogáin/Boggauns
• Baile an Bhogáin/Ballyboggan
• An Bogán/Boggaun
• Baile an Bhogáin/Ballyboggan
• Na Bogáin/Boggauns
• An Bogán/Boggan
• An Bogán/Boggaun
• Tamhnaigh an Bhogáin/Tawnawoggaun
• An Bogán/Boggan
• Baile Uí Bhogáin/Ballyboggan
• An Bogán Riabhach/Boggaunreagh
• An Bogán Fionn/Bogganfin
• Tor an Bhogáin/Turavoggaun
• An Bogán/Boggaun
• Cluain Uí Bhogáin/Clanabogan
• Bóthar Uí Dhonnabháin/O'Donovan Road

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