Islands of Ireland: Furnished with many names

Throughout the 19th century this Connemara island was populated with an average of 150 people though much fewer call it home nowadays

The island of Furnish, Connemara, Co Galway. Throughout the 19th century the island was
populated with an average of 150 people, though much fewer call it home nowadays. Picture: Dan MacCarthy

Among the myriad places to which the late mapmaker Tim Robinson descended to gather placenames, was Forinish, Co Galway. Not for him the crude ‘Furnace’ but instead the evocative Irish word, redolent with meaning, though by coincidence it almost amounts to the same thing.

Fornais also appears as Foirneis, Forinis, Feenish, Furnish, Furneish, Finnish and Finish, giving subeditors plenty of opportunity to furnish a good headline. Toponymists write that the name derives from a place where iron was smelted, such as at a forge. Versions of the name are plentiful in Ireland. So in this case, the forge on the island. Galway library mentions “a furnace was once there for burning timber for the manufacture of Iron, in which timber was burned”.