What's in a name?

Based on a letter published in the Co Down Spectator on  6 Nov 2025

The old puzzle of the meaning of the ‘Bangor’ placename has been solved, although not in line with the theory that the name has something to do with the nature of the coastline around Bangor Bay.

The ancient name for Bangor Bay was ‘Inver Beg’ (from Irish ‘Inbhear Beag’), meaning ‘the estuary of the Beg’. The Beg is the stream which still flows into Bangor Bay, although now culverted under Southwell Road and elsewhere. The name was perfectly clear and understandable. 

The tradition is that Saint Patrick, spending the night in the valley of the Beg, experienced the vision of a heavenly choir – so that the place became known as the ‘Valley of the Angels’.

And it was in the ‘Valley of the Angels’, on the banks of the Beg, but almost a mile away from the sea, that Comgall chose around 558 AD to site his famous monastery. Afterwards, Irish monks wrote its name in their annals as ‘Beannchair’, but also ‘Beannchar’, ‘Bennchor’, ‘Beanncuir’ and ‘Beannchor’.

The name appears elsewhere in Ireland. Yet, while we speak of ‘Bangor’, the other Irish names are given in English most often as ‘Banagher’ (the extra middle syllable is part of normal pronunciation in Irish)  There is a parish of the name in Co. Derry, a town in Offaly (based on a Banagher townland), and townlands in Cavan, Fermanagh, Galway, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Mayo and Westmeath.

There are several ‘Bangors’ in Wales – in Carnarvonshire (Gwynedd), Cardiganshire (Ceredigion) and on the River Dee in Flintshire (Clwyd). When the Irish annalists referred to any of these places, they wrote the name as ‘Beannchar'. 

In Scotland, the name of modern Banchory (Aberdeenshire) is written in Scots Gaelic as ‘Beannchar’ - Irish missionaries to the Picts may have brought the name with them.

In the 1990s, a Welsh Professor, Bedwyr Lewis Jones, studied the Welsh Bangors and discovered that all were Christian sites.

The Christian origin is the key towards understanding our city’s name.

Irish and Welsh are related Celtic languages - ‘bennchor’ or ‘bangor’ is the same early compound, made up of related terms found in both Celtic languages.

The compound has two elements, a noun and a verb. The noun is Irish benn or Welsh ban, while the verb is Irish cuir /cor or Welsh –cor.

The noun benn means ‘horn, peak’ (thus ‘top part, high’ in Welsh), but also ‘stake’ or ‘prong’.  

The verb cuir /cor is used frequently in Irish and has multiple meanings: ‘putting, sending, throwing, arranging, settling, twisting, turning’.

The Irish church was a great encloser of land around both churches and monasteries. The church’s practice was to erect a fence, normally of wattle, around the site. 'Wattle’ describes a combination of pointed vertical stakes, held in place by many horizontal branches twisted around and between the stakes.

The original sense of ‘beannchor’ is 'a staked & wattled enclosure'.

The word’s meaning was then extended to mean ‘the institution within the enclosure’.  This might become a monastery’s common and official name, which is what happened in our own local case.  

In Old Welsh, the compound name became established as the general name for a wattled fence, but this did not happen in Old Irish. In Ireland the term ‘beanncor’ was limited to its use as a placename.  Over the years, the original meaning was forgotten, leading to centuries of confusion.

The English language came to Ulster only in the 12th century with the Cambro-Normans from Wales.  Welsh ‘Bangor’ seems to have influenced the English name given to our monastery. The English name for the monastery on the Beg became Welsh ‘Bangor’ instead of Irish ‘Banagher’.

Finally, I must thank Dr Kay Muhr, formerly of the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project and the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, for her help in providing much of this information.

James O’Fee 

 Bangor

24 November 2025