Township: An Àird a Tuath,Caolas

Map Reference:

Name Type: watercourse

Meaning: This is ON á (genitive singular ár) 'stream', with ON óss 'mouth of a river; ár-óss 'the mouth of the river'' (CV, 39). This has been palatalised in the genitive case in the Gaelic compound form ScG Sruthan Àrais 'the little stream of Àras'. Á may even have been the name for the northeastern tip of Caolas: the name Å occurs twenty times in Norway (NG).
Àros on Mull has been derived in the same way; there is an Aros Bay on Islay; there is a Stack Aros on the west coast of Harris (SP), and an Allt Àrais on Raasay (MacKay 2013,81); and place-names from ON Áróss are common in Scandinavia (Macniven 2015, 166).

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Local Form:

Languages : Norse, Gaelic

Informants: William MacIntosh, Caolas, 2/1994

Informant 2: Angus MacLean, Scarinish, 11/1996