ABSTRACT
Irish uses a patronymic system of assigning surnames after one’s father or another relative; this system accounts for the majority of traditional surnames. Irish surnames tend to be associated with particular counties. It is common to find several families with the same name in a single community. Moreover, traditional given names tend to be favored in family after family (at least until quite recently), so a small Gaeltacht community might well house more than one person with exactly the same name. Irish place names also have their own syntactic structure, which is that of a noun phrase. Like personal names, they typically have distinct Irish and English versions. Traditional Irish place names are typically composed of phrases that include a term referring to some geographical feature or architectural structure of note in the region (church, castle, fort), followed by a descriptive term or name. The repeated use of certain geographical terms gives Irish place names their characteristic flavor.
