Everywhere I find An Caladh as the Irish pendant of Portmagee. But what does 'caladh' mean? My dictionary says 'harbour' and that's what I find on the Wikipedia-page in English. But there are a lot of sources that give 'ferry' or 'quay' as translation. Are both translations correct? Or is the one translation more correct than the other one? Or has the meaning of 'caladh' changed in time (e.g. 'ferry'= older; 'harbour' = more recent)?

Another thing is the name of the townland. Logainm.ie gives 'Port Mhic Aoidh'. Is that a gaelification (is that a correct word?) of Portmagee? If not, what does 'Mhic Aoidh' mean? And how about 'Port'? Does it (in the name of the townland) have the same meaning as 'Port' in 'Portmagee' (that is: 'harbour'?)

Thanks in advance.

Caladh is a common element in Irish place names, and it can mean a quay, or just a low place adjoining water where boats might come ashore.

Port in this case presumably does mean a place with a harbor. It has other meanings in Irish, though. It can be an embankment, a fortified place, a tune (port a beul), and in some places it can refer to a townland.

Mac Aoidh (more customarily Mag Aoidh) is the Irish form of the Name McGee (which is more or less how it's pronounced in Irish), which is often anglicized in place names as "magee". The Irish first name Aodh (or Aoidh) is often anglicized as Hugh, but that's not a translation. It's an ancient Gaelic name and the Hugh equivalent was introduced by the Normans, who had a name, Hugues, which they used as its equivalent. So, Mag Aoidh means "son of Aodh" (or "son of Hugh", in later times).

In the name Port Mhic Aoidh, the word mac ("son") is placed in the genitive case, becoming mhic ("of the son"), so the full name means "Port of McGee" or, literally, "Port of the son of Aodh". It could also be rendered as "McGee's Port", using the English/Germanic genitive form, just like McKeesport in the US state of Pennsylvania.

A number of places in Ireland have multiple names. Even the capital, Dublin, has two names, Baile Atha Cliath ("town of the ford of the hurdles") is its original Irish name (or so we're told), but the Vikings called it Dubh Linn ("Blackpool" in Norse Irish, named after the dark-water inlet that used to be next to where Dublin Castle now stands), which led to Dyflin and ultimately Dublin.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Thank you very much for your elaborate answer to my questions related to Portmagee.

It makes me wonder what (in time) the usual order has been in the business of giving names to Irish places. Is it fair to say that most English versions are anglicisations of earlier Irish originals? Are there examples of the opposite order?

How do Portmagee and An Caladh and Port Mhic Aoidh fit in this framework?

Kind regards.

It was often the case that the Irish place name and the English one didn't have any relationship to each other. The English colonists not being able to pronounce the Irish one just called the place whatever they liked. Other times they tried to say with an English accent again missing the meaning of the place.

I can't comment in particular about Portmagee. But a likely scenario was that the locals called the place An Caladh (the small harbour), then the English called it a Port named about some guy called McGee, then later it was translated back to Irish as Port Mhic Aoidh.

That is pretty much what happened, it was named way later in English after Theobald McGee. Native speakers in Uíbh Ráthach still say "An Caladh".

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal