?Cearnach's ringfort

While this anglicised place-name is quite well attested its etymology is uncertain.

The occurrence of the voiced palato-alveolar fricative /dʒ/ (as in English John) in an Irish place-name is often hard to account for, as this phoneme is extremely rare in Irish (see BALLYGERRY (#54371), par. Kilrane). It is therefore difficult to determine the Irish precursor to the anglicised qualifying element -jarney here.

The early forms (1–3, 5, 6, 7) are quite consistent in showing initial ia- /ja-/ in the second element. It is likely that the ‘alias’ form in the ASE, ‘Rath-Jarny als. Rathgarny’ (6, 6a), merely gives two written versions then current in authoritative sources; compare the spelling in DS and BSD in J- (3, 5) and the Census spelling in -g- (4) (cf. LnÉ i p.xiv). It is possible that this form in -g- itself originates in a miscopying of capital I- or J-, in which case its occurrence on later maps may be due to transcription from these or similar documents (cf. 14). It is interesting to note in this regard that the sources for the Namebook examples in -j- (11, 13) are somewhat more informal than those providing -g- (12).

Overall, then, these seventeenth-century spellings would appear to be variations on an underlying anglicised form similar to *Rath-Iarney/*Rath-Jarney. The difficulty lies in the interpretation of the -i-/j- in these earliest examples: whether it was intended from the beginning to represent a consonantal j-sound akin to /ʒ/ or /dʒ/, or whether it initally represented a semi-vocalic /j/ (as in English y) which subsequently developed to the modern /dʒ/.

If these seventeenth-century forms in -i-/ j- are taken as the y-sound /j/, then they might be understood to represent an initial diphthong /ia/, as in Iarnaigh, gen. sg. of the personal name Iarnach or of the common noun iarnach “fetters; ploughshare” (see FGB iarnach, DIL íarnach). In regard to the subsequent development of /j/ to /dʒ/ a comparison might perhaps be made to the anglicisation of the initial diphthong /ia/ (> /ja/) > /dʒa/ in the personal name Iarlaith > Jarlath. But this hypothesis is undermined by the absence of unambiguous evidence for /eː/ or /iː/ in the penultimate syllable, the usual anglicised realisation of the diphthong ia in Wexford (see LEEGANE (#53434), par. Clongeen; BALLYLEIGH (#53337), par. St. Mullin’s).

On the other hand, if the initial phoneme in the Irish qualifier was represented in transliterated English form as consonantal -j- /ʒ/ or /dʒ/, then O’Donovan’s derivation from ‘Rath Cearnaigh’ [Ráth Chearnaigh] (15) (see also Joyce iii p.539; BPP p.81) may be preferable: the anglicisation of slender Irish ch- /xʹ/ as /ʃ/ is attested elsewhere (e.g. Kilmashogue < Cill Mochíog; see logainm.ie) and the personal name Cearnach occurs frequently in early Irish sources (see CGH p.543 Cernach). Ráth “rath” in this instance probably refers to the site of the earthwork located in this townland (see AIW 904).

[Excerpt from Logainmneacha na hÉireann IV: Townland Names of County Wexford, 2016]