ABSTRACT
The naming of places is both a necessary means of recognition and communication but also a fundamental means of laying claim to territory. The process of naming is more than a value-free description of a point in space, being a means of expressing and fostering senses of place and linking these with selected aspects of the past. Using the example of rural Northern Ireland, Reid [4] examines the relationships between identity and memory through the naming of local places. She acknowledges that naming can be part of broader processes of inclusion and exclusion when linked to particular historical narratives in a divided or unagreed society. While local names may be indicative of diverse cultural influences, they can also be suborned to interpretations that reject pluralist notions of consociation in favour of singular ethnic figuring of space and place. Clearly, this does occur in Northern Ireland where the material marking of placenames in the actual landscape can be part of a broader claim to ethnic territoriality. But in her analysis of the Townlands Campaign in Northern Ireland, Reid shows, too, that the marking of local place remains of such fundamental importance that the process and its associated practices may themselves encourage divided peoples to join together in order to protect and perpetuate their named localities.
