Loch Uail is the version of the name found in the online version of Gasaitéar na hÉireann/Gazetteer of Ireland (2007) and the earlier printed copy from 1989. This version is based on research carried out by the Placenames Branch. Some of the results of that research are visible on the archival records available to the reader below. Indeed, it is clear from the evidence on those archival records that the earlier Irish version of the name was indeed Loch Uair. Further references to this form of the name can be found in the Onomasticon Goedelicum as prepared by the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. The original second element in the name would appear to be the uar, a noun described as “a cold thing” in the Dictionary of the Irish Language, so the original name, Mid.Ir. Loch Uair might be explained as “lake of (the) cold thing, coldness”. However, as is typical in early Irish literature, an alternative explanation is found in the Dinnseanchas (literature dedicated to placenames), and in the following quatrains it is described as deriving form a person called Uar (Old Irish Úar), although there is also a clear allusion to the real probable original meaning, i.e. Loch Uair “lake of (the) cold thing, coldness”.

Do-chuaid Aindind coa loch lainn Aindind went to his shining lake (i.e. Lough Ennell/Loch Ainninn in standard Modern Irish) Luid Úar úad ass cen errainn [airrann] Úar went from him without his portion co ríacht in loch n-úar n-aile until he reached the other cold lake ó fil lúad a láech-blaide from where his fame comes

Is Loch nÚair ó shin amach From then on it is Loch nÚair ‘ca ragaibh Úar a athach: where Úar gained his breeze (breath) cid d’éis Aindind, gairb im ga, so after the time of Aindind, rough with a spear, ro-len a ainm in loch-sa. His name (Uar) follows this lake

(The Metrical Dindshenchas IV, p. 234; editor Edward Gwynn, reprint 1991. See also p. 230).

Be that as it may, as a result of the research carried out, it is clear that the anglicised form of the name, i.e. Lough Owel, ending in -l, is not simply some corruption of Loch Uair, but it actually reflects the pronunciation of this name by Irish-speakers at the time of anglicisation. Even in the seventeenth-century text The Martyology of Donegal (p. 434) we find the version (genitive) ‘Locha hUail’ in a gloss of an earlier entry referring to ‘Lomman Loca hUair’. It seems, then, that Loch Uail already had currency by that stage. Indeed, in his account of the course of the River Shannon dating from 1795 Micheál Ó Braonáin, called it ‘Loch Uail’ (see here). Then, during the course of the Ordnance Survey, John O’Donovan commented that ‘the present Loch Uail is the Loch Uair of the ancients’ (Ordnance Survey Letters (OSL) I, p. 166). In the same source Thomas O’Conor wrote ‘On an island, called by the Irish-speaking people Inis Mór insula magna, and by the English-speaking people, church island, and by some persons ‘nothing but the island, Sir’, which lies on Lough-h-uair, now made corruptly Lough-owel from the common Irish pronunciation, which now prevails, viz. Loch Uaill (the liquid r being translated into the liquid sound of l, which is always represented, according to my system of Orthography, with ll)’. Later in the same source John O’Donovan wrote ‘[one] finds the liquid consonants l, n, r put for each other in innumerable instances, of which a striking one presents itself … the Loch Uair of the ancients is now invariably styled Loch Uail’ (OSL II p. 3).

One of the primary criteria for the recommendation of an official Irish form is whether that form can be demonstrated to have been the name in common use in Irish at the latest period at which Irish was spoken as a vernacular in the area. In the case of Loch Uail, it seems that version of the name was in use among native Irish-speakers for at least two hundred years prior to its recording as such during the course of the Ordnance Survey, and it is therefore that form of the name that was recommended as the standard Irish form of anglicised Lough Owel. (JÓG; CÓC, 02 Bealtaine 2025).