OpenStreetMap
Exciting, first entry: So, I’ve been interested in fieldnames in Ireland for a while. Maybe because it’s so exotic to me, because I’m not from a farming background and I’m not aware they exist in Germany. Maybe because it’s oral history and highly underrated by scholars and taken for granted by farmers, i.e. they don’t see the value in their personal heritage (“Sure, that’s just the name we use, like.”).
I’m also a member of Kilkenny Archaeological Society and always on the lookout for group projects that might bring new members into the society or just a bit more engagement with actual people rather than books or bones.
Anyway, being a newbie on FieldPapers, I thought I’d give it at try. I had got a glimps into FieldPapers during the talk Ciarán gave. I liked the idea that a group of people could work together, maybe even in a school project. Gotta get them mappers young!
The Links
The first video is about how to make the atlas, the second about how to use the png files in the iD editor. I thought JOSM was a bit too techical and scary for beginners. It’s also not terribly more useful for field names than the iD Editor is. I had made a tutorial before that of just using the iD editor.
I had sent links to a couple of historical and archaeological societies I found on Facebook, the ones that did reply (lockdown + expected demographic = non responsive) were throughout postitive about it and shared it on their page. I just picked some random ones where county names came to mind. I should send out a few more to the Wesht, before it’s too late.
Discussion
Comment from DeBigC on 15 May 2020 at 02:25
Well done @b-unicycling. It was nice to help you, and I love where you have gone with it.
Comment from SK53 on 15 May 2020 at 12:22
If you are surveys & talking to people it would be very useful to actually make a voice recording of the pronunciation of the field name (obviously with their permission). This is valuable in English, but much more so if it is an Irish name. Field names tend to get passed down in the same family for generations and therefore tend to keep older forms of pronunciation, dialect terms and vocabulary. As such they are an invaluable resource for dialectologists studying the language. (Note, my cousin & uncle are such people specialising in Celtic languages, which is how I know).
We have a small number of locations in England where field names have been mapped (e.g. Gedling, Middle Weald and Cambourne). I have seen a detailed map of field names for the village of Hope in Derbyshire, but not an admissible source.
Elsewhere alpine meadows in Sankt Anton-am-Arlberg usually have names. They are perhaps better known as the names of ski runs, but for the most part are derived from names of pastures (Gampen from Ladin/Romansch Gampli; Mattun also from Ladin, a cabbage family plant; Arlenmähder etc.) Again I saw a detailed map of the commune with these as locality names.
Comment from b-unicycling on 15 May 2020 at 13:24
Hi SK53,
that is a very good idea about the voice recording, especially when people are doing it who are no natives speakers of Irish (not that I think there are native speakers of any language, because you are usually not able to speak when you are born, but that’s another matter). I will keep it in mind for the future. Is there a way to save these recording snippets in OSM, so Gaelgeoirí could transcribe them?