WITH THE RECENT media storm around the proposed renaming of Herzog Park in Rathgar, it is worth taking a look at the practice of naming and renaming places (and other things) in Ireland more generally.

The naming of places is one of the most basic, yet powerful and symbolic acts of geographical appropriation.

The naming of landmarks is also often deployed as an act of commemoration of individuals, organisations, and events.

Renaming places is therefore also a powerful act which can be controversial.

Indigenous Irish placenames have survived from earliest times to the present day through the Irish language. The oldest examples of these are our rivers, which are often named after Celtic Goddesses, e.g. An Bhóinn, An Bhandain.

Over time, many more named places emerged. Most of our 60,000 townland names came from the two-thousand-year-old Irish language and are therefore immensely valuable in terms of geographic, environmental, linguistic, social and political history. They provide a link to our culture before colonisation. Ironically, the British helped us preserve this link by not renaming these places on their maps (apart from Anglicising them).

Of course, while all of Ireland was once Irish speaking, Dublin developed largely under English rule (even though Irish would have been widely spoken there throughout history until more recent times).

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Some of this geographical appropriation was undone following........

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