Hello everybody,

my father has picked a new name for our house and as he is not sure about his Irish, he asked me to get someone to confirm.

So what would you think 'Coill na chuileann' would be translated as? Also, as a bonus for me, can someone please give me a hint how to pronounce this one?

Cheers!
Anna

Coill an Chuilinn would be ‘the holly wood’, ‘the wood of the holly-tree’ (wood of some particular holly tree), Coill Chuilinn, I believe, would be a general, indefinite, ‘a holly wood, a wood of holly’.

cuileann is ‘holly-tree’ in the nominative, if you want to use it as an attribute you need a genitive cuilinn ‘holly’s, of a holly-tree’, and since it is a masculine noun, the definite genitive ‘of the holly’ is an chuilinn.

There is a similar place name in Ireland: Cill Chuilinn (anglicized as Kilcullen), meaning ‘church of holly, holly church’.

EDIT: since FGB states that cuileann might be feminine, something like *coill na cuilinn (or: cuilinne?) might be ok in some dialects. Someone who knows a dialect that uses this word as a feminine one would need to confirm.

Thank you so much!

The house is seated on a strip of land that was on old maps called 'Hollywood'. We decided to translate it to lose the idea it's a movie studio.

But in this case the general indefinite would even make sense, right?

I’d guess so, thus I’d go with Coill Chuilinn which would be pronounced /kˠiːl’ xˠil’iŋ’/ or /kˠəil’ xˠil’in’/, you can listen to the pronunciation of coill and cuilinn in three main Irish dialects on teanglann.ie – you’d just need to change the /k/ sound at the beginning of cuilinn into the ch /x/ sound (like ch in Loch Garman).

But since I am just a learner, intermediate at best, wait for some input of other people. There might be some better ways to say it, or I might have made some mistakes.

Thank you!

This Irish townland page https://www.townlands.ie/search/?q=hollywood says this:

Hollywood (An Choill Naofa) , Barony of Balrothery West, Co. Dublin

It seems that in this case, “holly” means “holy”.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t interpret it the way you want. I rather prefer the plant.

As far as the grammar goes, I think silmeth has given you something good.

It's in Clare, not in Dublin. Also it's full of holly and that is super annoying, so we will at least get the nice name out of it :-D

Ah, out in Loop Head.

wait for three confirmations

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice