Ireland/Gaelic

Names in the Irish Language

OpenIrishMap (new) - map showing names in irish (Map internationalization)

Irish is the first official language of Ireland, but English is the most common spoken and written language.

Most places and street names will have both an Irish and English form.

• The Irish name should be entered in the name:ga tag
• The English name should be entered in the name:en tag
• The common usage name give in the name tag.

For example Dún Laoghaire a town in south Dublin is commonly written using the Irish version of it's name Dún Laoghaire even though it has a commonly-spoken English version of the name Dunleary.

Modern Irish street signs use a standard Latin font with an alphabet which includes the letters A to Z plus vowels with síntí fada Á É Í Ó Ú (in Irish this is shown with an acute accent, unlike Scots Gaelic, which uses a grave accent to denote a similar thing). Older street signs can use an Irish script font which includes alternative forms for some of the letters, along with letters with a dot above them, which is transliterated into Roman script as an 'h' following the dotted letter. The following table gives an example of the mapping:

The following table lists common English words used in street names and their Irish equivalents:

• Irish (Gaeilge)
• Gaelic Script
• Gadelica Gaelic Font Other Gaelic Fonts