In a referendum held earlier today, its residents voted overwhelming to readopt its English name and save it from the imposition of the Irish placename, An Daingean. |
Wikipedia has a fuller, highly amusing list of counterintuitive placename pronunciations. |
One interpretation of the placename is that it means 'green river' as in the Welsh river named Irfon. |
The change to the shorter spelling appears to have originated in the Donald Map of 1774, a document with a noticeable number of placename errors. |
Scotia is a Latin placename derived from Scoti, a Latin name for the Gaels. |
In the meantime, wood was more likely to be seen as a word in an ancient placename than on the ground. |