Sir, – Recent articles by Lorna Siggins and by Michael Viney (Another Life, December 3rd) have referred to Gordon Darcy's suggestion that the crane ( Grus grus) was once abundant in Ireland. Some of the evidence posited for that is the number of place names embodying the word corr. This approach is problematic, however, and is not unique to the Irish language. The same vernacular name may refer to one or more species and a single species may have more than one name in the vernacular. Dineen (Irish-English Dictionary, 1927), for example, glosses corr as follows: "any bird of the crane or heron kind; a stork, bittern, etc", and with qualifying adjectives includes the "white spoonbill" and the "screech owl". An Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla(1977) includes the nestling of the gannet as corr mhara. In addition, in Hiberno-English the crane is used to describe the grey heron (Ardea cinerea).
The more likely explanation for the abundance of corr in place names is the topographical meaning of the word, which is a round or conical hill, as in the following extract from Dineen: “An Chorr Dhubh and An Chorr Chuileannach , the black round hill and the holly-clad round hill in the parish of Kilgobban in Corkaguiney”. – Yours, etc.