Place-Names of the Galloway Glens

Alhang

General Information
Historical Forms (4)

The stress is on the second syllable. Assume the first element is G ail, ‘rock, cliff, steep place’. There is another summit nearby which contains this element: Alwhat some 950m to the north-east. Their proximity and their sharing of this element in their names suggests that they may have been named as a contrastive pair.

G eang is a word with a wide range of meanings, as given by Dwelly: ‘leg, foot, hoof; triack, footstep; point of land; skirt, nook, corner, small portion’ and many more. It seems impossible to know what it represents in this case, assuming that G eang is present.

Blaeu’s Aldhing (1654) may represent his assimilation of G ail to G allt ‘burn, stream’ – a far more common element in Scottish toponymy. This is the name of a large hill, not a burn and it is unlikely that G allt is present. But Blaeu’s d may represent the initial dental of the second element which has since been lost. One possible explanation for the d might be G teanga ‘tongue’ referring to some tongue-shaped formation on the hill as perceived by those who named it. Aldhing, however, is not a very convincing representation of ail teangaidh, so this is suggested as an outside possibility.

The variety of spellings in the early forms makes any analysis of this name more problematic, as it is now impossible to ascertain what the stressed vowel of the name might have been.

Note that Alwhannie Knowes form part of the lower SW slope of this mountain. Is it possible that the same specific original aname is found in both Alhang and Alwhannie? If so, Alwhannie might help to shed light on Alhang.

The summit of this hill marks the boundary between GWY and AYR (also Carsphairn and New Cumnock).

Parishes: Carsphairn [CPH] (KCB), New Cumnock (formerly part of Cumnock) [NCU] (AYR), Classification code: Relief (R)

Elements: G ail + G eang or G teanga Show more detail

G ail, Certainty: 2, Role: Generic, Number: Singular, Part of Speech: N, Description: also aill/all, gen. sing. alla (m), ‘rock, cliff, stone’, both obsolete according to Dwelly, but the latter preserved in modern G mac-talla or macalla ‘echo’, literally ‘son of (the) cliff’. The element appears in OG as ail, gen. sing. alo, ‘rock, boulder’ (f.), and is a fairly common element in place-names. Note also OG oil f., ‘a large stone or pillar-stone (fixed) in the ground’, which DIL suggests is the same word as ail. DIL also lists ailech and states that it is a collective term formed from OG ail, and it is presumably the origin of G eileach ‘(stone-built) mill-dam, mound, bank, rock, weir’. According to W. J. Watson, this latter element is found in such Scottish place-names as Elcho PER and Elchies BNF (1926, 478–9), and may be the second element in Cullaloe ABO, possibly indicating the presence of good building stone.[1] Ail may also occur in compound with other nouns, such as ail-mhagh ‘rock-plain’, possibly underlying Tulliallan TUL (Vol. 1). In Scotland in general it is probable that some place-names containing this element are actually derived from a lost British and Pictish *al ‘rock’. Though it is not attested in old or modern Welsh as a lexical item, it is found in place-names such as Al Clut (with various spellings) (‘Clyde Rock’, now Dumbarton Rock). Note also Welsh elech (f.), which GPC analyses as containing the intensifying prefix e- + llech ‘flat stone, flag stone’ (cognate with G leac with similar meaning). The relationship between this word and Scottish names such as Elchies, Elcho and even Cullaloe requires further investigation.
+
G eang, Certainty: 2, Role: Specific, Number: Singular, Case: Genitive, Part of Speech: N, Description: ‘A nook, gusset, primarily something angular or triangular’ (Watson 1926, 180). Dwelly gives a wider range of meanings: 'leg, foot, hoof, track, footstep, point of land, corner, small portion' amongst others. Two separate OG words underlie Dwelly's definitions, namely 1. OG eng 'track, trace' and 2. eng (f.) '(a) a portion of surface, angle, strip, patch, esp. a piece or strip of cloth; (b) a piece of land, district, territory, country' (DIL). Gen. sing. eanga.
or
G teanga, Certainty: 3, Role: Specific, Number: Singular, Case: Genitive, Part of Speech: N, Description: gen. sing. teangaidh. 'Tongue'.

Grid Reference: NS642009, Certainty: 1, Latitude: 55.283440847751, Longitude: -4.1383979487519, Altitude: 601m, Landranger sheets: n/a

Aldhing 1654
Source:
Blaeu (Eastern Galloway) (Praefectura Kircubriensis quae Gallovidiae maxime orientalis pars est. The Stuartrie of Kircubright, the most easterlie part of Galloway / auct. Tim. Pont), Author: Joan Blaeu, Published: Amsterdam, (1654) Find out more about this source
Alhinge 1797
Source:
Ainslie/Stewartry (The Stewartry of Kirkcudbright), Published: Edinburgh, (1797) Find out more about this source
Allhang c.1850
alternative form given by two informants
Source:
OS1/20 (Ordnance Survey Name Book), /4/13, Published: Now on line resource. [These are the reports of the OS surveyors who collected data on place-names preparatory for the OS 1st edn map series.] Find out more about this source
Alhang 1853
Source:
OS 6 inch 1st edn (Ordnance Survey map of Great Britain, 1st edition), sheet 3, Published: The version used is that published on line in high-resolution scans by National Library of Scotland (www.nls.uk)., (1853) [To see a place-name on the OS 6 inch 1st edn map, go to the website of the National Library of Scotland (click on the URL given here) and enter its grid reference in the box marked Enter National Grid Reference.] Find out more about this source

Place-name data

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