Some Belfast Placenames, 1712-1736

Le Forde

In old documents of the 1300s, and later, Belfast was recorded as Le Foord or Le Forde (‘The Ford’). Many other Ulster-Scots placenames are prefixed with the definite article (eg The Coontie Doon, The Cardy, The Dee, etc). In Medieval times, when Norman-French was the ‘official language’ used for many legal documents, the Norman definite article le was used, even in ‘English’ translations, giving us mention of places like Le Cardie, Le Coule, Le Water Street, or even buildings: ‘At a meeting holden in Le Tholsel de Knockfergus’. Le Foorde, therefore, simply means ‘The Ford’. Of course, the use of le for ‘the’ is a well-known marker of Belfast speech today: See ye lemorra (‘themorrow’); The wee lad cum intae le shap. The feminine French article la was not used in Ulster-Norman legal documents.

‘Belfast’, the modern name, is derived from a Gaelic placename which had a number of early forms in a whole range of spellings. These different forms have suggested different meanings to Gaelic scholars. Most of the surviving early forms of ‘Belfast’ such as Bealfarsad represent attempts at ‘phonetic’ spelling by English-speaking writers of the Gaelic place name before 1613 when the town received its charter, and the name became ‘fossilised’, in legal terms, as Belfast. The different original Gaelic forms and meanings of Belfast are not considered here, as they are properly the subject of Celtic scholarship. It should be noted, however, that although most of the Gaelic forms were written down in the 17th century, they refer to events much earlier (such as the Battle between the Cruithin and the Ulaid in 665 AD). The most widely accepted meanings for ‘Belfast’ are ‘the mouth (beal) of the Farset (River)’ or the ‘mouth of the sandbank/ford’. The word feirste or ‘farset’ can mean sandbank, crossing-place, or ford, so these two explanations are complementary.

The Farset River entered the Lagan at the lower end of High Street. The nearby Blackstaff River has a tributary north of Woodvale (very close to the upper course of the Farset) called the Forth River. In the early 18th century Belfast register examined below, the ‘Farset’ river is not mentioned, but appears to be called the fforth.

Forth is the Ulster-Scots form of ‘fort’, but also, possibly, ‘ford’. In the 1306 Papal Taxation, the Latin form of ‘ford’; vadum, was used for the site of Belfast.

In the 1700s, the flourishing town of Belfast became overwhelmingly Presbyterian and ‘Ulster-Scots’ at all social levels. The Anglicised Gaelic name of the city was re-spelt ‘phonetically’ in the 1860s as Bilfawst in the Poor Rabins Almanac. The Almanac’s contents were ‘prentit jest the way people spaiks’ by its author ‘Billy McCart’, and since that date, Bilfawst has occasionally been used as the modern Ulster-Scots form of the city’s name. For example, the South Belfast Cultural Society based in Donegall Pass also describes itself as the Fowkgates Societie o Sooth Bilfawst.

By the 1860s, however, Belfast had ceased to be an almost exclusively Ulster-Scots city, with ‘Irish’ Catholics and ‘Ulster-English’ Episcopalians from mid and South Ulster flooding into the post-famine city. The Victorian and Edwardian industrial growth of Belfast, and modern population shifts, further reduced the Ulster-Scots character of the city. Obviously, therefore, most of the Victorian and later placenames within the city have no roots in either the Gaelic or Ulster-Scots languages.

One historical source — the Funeral Register of First Belfast Presbyterian Church from 1712 to 1736 — gives us a useful insight into some of the street names and other placenames in and around Belfast at a time when its Ulster-Scots character was solid.

A number of individual buildings are mentioned in this 1712-1736 Register:

Although not mentioned in the Register, later in the century the city had a ‘Sugarhouse Entry’. The Inn called, on more than one occasion, the ‘Hole of the Wall’ may have been wrongly ‘corrected’ from a spoken Scots form such as Hole i’ the Wa (‘Hole in the Wall’), understood as the similarly-sounding Hole o’ the Wa. The Pown, or Pownd was a place rather than a building — the livestock ‘pound’ for the Marchait.

In the early 1700s, the city did not extend beyond the limits of the present inner city centre. Some of the street and ‘entry’ names here were as follows:

Other placenames not readily identifiable include:

At the harbour or Quay, we have:

Besides the fforth River, a number of bridges are mentioned:

Moving out to the 18th century suburbs, we find references to districts now within the city limits:

In the present suburbs of the city, we also find the following:

Besides the Belfast place-names, the 1712-1736 Register also contains scores of fascinating versions of local placenames from wider afield —mostly in the Antrim and Down ‘contre’ where Ulster-Scots settlement, and where connections with the First Belfast congregation, were strongest.

Indeed, there is much in this Register, apart from place and personal names, to interest the serious student of the Ulster-Scots tongue. Phonetic spellings of many words tell us how they might have been pronounced here over 250 years ago.

The spelling of words such as lean for ‘lane’ and streat for ‘street’ are strongly suggestive of the modern Ulster-Scots vowel sounds still current (LEE-IN, for ‘lane’ and STHREE-AT, rhyming with ‘gate’, for ‘street’). Here are a few further examples:

The main interest in some of these words is in their spelling and pronunciation, for the entries in the Register are not particularly ‘braid Scotch’ in their vocabulary.

However, this is just as we would expect from a formal, sober source such as a church funeral register. Despite the various scribes attempts to present the record in ‘good’ English, their everyday Ulster-Scots tongue still shines through in entries such as:

“A Scoatch Man that Dayed in town”

(‘A Scots man who died in town’).

What a pity we have so few written records for the early 18th century Ulster-Scots city on less serious subjects than a Presbyterian register of funerals.

Philip Robinson

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Answer: A swarm of bees

Tullymanowes is a very steep hill in the townland of Tullymanowes, which borders the Clea Lough. The grave of the Caffey brothers is also in this townland.