Mapping Scotland: Confusion between Gaelic, Scots placenames [audio 9min @ 7:45]

Biographer and broadcaster Vanessa Collingridge and the"Making History" team discuss listeners' historical queries and celebrate the many ways in which we all 'make' history. Listener Talitha MacKenzie contacted the programme to ask: 'I was wondering if you could confirm the following story': A team of mapmakers came up from England looking to take down the Gaelic placenames on the Island of Lewis. While staying at a B&B in Kirkhead, they asked their landlady 'What does the Gaelic word kirk mean?' Of course, kirk is not a Gaelic word at all, but the Scots word for 'church'. Not wanting to embarrass her guests, she gave them the translation of the closest word in Gaelic to the word kirk--cearc (or circ), which means 'chicken'. So is there a headland (with a once famous church) now called Chickenhead in Lewis?"Making History" contacted the placename specialist Professor David Munro of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Glasgow, and Paedar Morgan, a Gaelic language expert in Inverness.