AN SPIDEAL, Ireland — Generations of English-speaking tourists who have used this pretty village of thatched cottages as a jumping-off point for the pleasures of the wild Connemara region have known it as Spiddal.
But a new government policy means that the settlement, which boasts spectacular views of Galway Bay and the Aran Islands in the distance, will be known only by its Gaelic name, An Spideal.
As of March 28, all English versions of place names were eliminated in the Gaeltacht, the pockets of Ireland where a majority of people still speak Gaelic. English no longer has official standing on signposts, legal documents or government maps. (For now, until the sign-makers get cracking, officials are just covering up the English names.)
It is the latest official gesture in support of the Irish tongue. But is it too little, too late? In the midst of an economic boom that is both encouraging and threatening Gaelic's popularity, many advocates for the republic's "first official language" are worried.
"It is terrible how things are going," said Seamas O Cualain, an 82-year-old enthusiast of the language of his forebears, which is almost always called Irish on this island to distinguish it from the Scottish form of Gaelic. "The language is dying in the Gaeltacht."
The lilting tongue, which arrived in Ireland with the Celts centuries before Romans reached the British Isles, has an alluring sound, aspirated consonants and a rich trove of poetry and folklore. Just a few words have moved into English: "smithereens" and "leprechaun," for example. But something of its musical syntax is captured by Irish English, as in the phrase, " 'Tis himself that's coming now."
The change in the place names makes sense, advocates say. The English versions, put down by government surveyors in the early 1800s, are mostly nonsensical phonetic approximations of Gaelic words.
Spiddal, for instance, has no meaning in English or Irish. But in Irish, An Spideal means "the hospital," a name that derives from the village's having once been the site of a leper colony.
Another egregious example is a spit of land with the bowdlerized English name of Muckanaghederdauhaulia. In Irish, it won't be much easier to spell: Muiceanach idir Dha Shaile. But at least it will have a meaning: the point between two tides.
Tourist maps, however, will continue to carry English place names in the Gaeltacht -- which includes parts of seven counties -- alongside the Irish.
