Creamhchoill and other aromatic place-names in Ireland

Carpets of wild garlic

Nowadays, most of the garlic we use in everyday cooking is imported from the Far East. However, every April or May the Irish countryside (like many parts of Britain) provides an abundant, if vastly underused, native alternative. Practically overnight, whole swathes of moist, shaded areas – such as the woodlands along the River Liffey in Lucan, Co. Dublin – become carpeted in wild garlic, with its characteristic leaves and unmistakable aroma. The striking effect readily explains the proliferation of the Irish word creamhchoill ‘wild-garlic wood’ in place-names. This is a close compound of creamh ‘wild garlic’ (etymologically related to the English word ramsons) and coill ‘wood’, and it occurs in the names of townlands (small traditional land units) across the country; these are listed below.

A prized ingredient

As well as being easy to recognize, areas producing wild garlic were also highly prized in early Irish society. In his essential book Early Irish Farming, based mainly on an analysis of early legal texts, Fergus Kelly reveals many details of the traditional early Irish diet and other aspects of native culture that were all but erased from the national consciousness after the destruction of Gaelic society in the seventeenth century. One text explicitly states the esteem in which creamh (Old Irish crem) ‘wild garlic’ was held in the early period. The plant was so highly valued that every year, just before Easter, a client was obliged to provide his lord with a creimhfheis (Old Irish crimḟeis) ‘garlic feast’ – consisting of wild garlic, cheese and milk – on pain of a fine. The early texts also show that garlic-flavoured butter was on the menu in Gaelic Ireland over a thousand years before the arrival of garlic bread with modern Italian cuisine.

Creamh (wild garlic) carpets the banks of the River Liffey

Photo © Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhgaill

Wild garlic woods

The importance of creamh ‘wild garlic’ to early Irish communities is also reflected in numerous townland names. The most direct reference is An Chreamhach, the forerunner to Knavagh in Co. Galway, which means simply ‘the place abounding in wild garlic’. However, by far the most common place-name referring to creamh is Creamhchoill ‘wild-garlic wood’, mentioned above. This Irish name produces a variety of anglicized versions such as Crophill and Crewhill in Co. Kildare; Crawhill in Co. Sligo; Craffield in Co. Wicklow; Cranfield and Crankill in Co. Antrim; and Cranfield in Cos. Down and Tyrone. Note the tendency towards analogy with the unrelated English place-name elements field and hill in these anglicized forms. The townland name Greamhchoill in the Co. Mayo Gaeltacht (formerly Graghil in English) is a development from this same word Creamhchoill via the prepositional phrase i gCreamhchoill ‘in Creamhchoill’. (In the late twentieth-century one local explanation of the name was based on analogy with grean ‘grit, gravel’ + poill ‘holes’!)

Creamhchoill also occurs in townland names in conjunction with other generic elements, for instance Cluain Creamhchoille / Clooncraffield ‘(wet) pasture of (the) wild-garlic wood’ in Co. Roscommon, and Deramfield / Doire Chreamhchoille ‘(oak‑)wood, grove of (the) wild-garlic wood’ in Co. Cavan.

Far less common than Creamhchoill are place-names that refer to wild garlic woods in the form of open compounds, which are likely to be of later origin: see for example Killycramph / Coill an Chreamha ‘the wood of the wild garlic’ in Co. Cavan, and Derrycraff / Doire Chreamha ‘(oak-)wood, grove of wild garlic’ in Co. Mayo. Killycramph, the name of two townlands in Co. Fermanagh (in the parishes of Cill Náile and Achadh Bheithe) also appears to derive from Coill an Chreamha or Coillidh Chreamha ‘(the) wood of (the) wild garlic’ (see placenamesni.org).

Other creamh place-names

Occurrences of creamh ‘wild garlic’ are not restricted to townland names denoting woodlands, although the occurrence of the one with the other so frequently is significant. There are numerous instances of the place-name Cluain Creamha ‘(wet) pasture, meadow of (the) wild garlic’: we find it anglicized as Cloncrew in Co. Limerick; Clooncraff in Co. Roscommon; and Coolcraff [sic] in Co. Longford. As it happens, three separate examples of Cluain Creamha fell victim to big-house rebranding during the eighteenth century: in Co. Offaly it became [Cloncraff or] Bloomhill; in Co. Longford, Mountdavis; and in Co. Roscommon, Mountdillon.

Other names of more or less low-lying places containing references to creamh include Eanach Creamha ‘marsh of (the) wild garlic’, which is the forerunner to both Annacroff and Annacramph in Co. Monaghan; Gleann Creamha ‘valley of (the) wild garlic’, anglicized Glencraff in Co. Galway and Glencrue in Co. Tipperary; Tamhnach an Chreamha / Tawnaghaknaff ‘the green field of the wild garlic’ in Co. Mayo; and Currach an Chreamha / Curraghacnav ‘the wet land of the garlic’ in Co. Waterford.

Townlands on higher ground include Drumgramph / Droim gCreamha ‘ridge of (the) wild garlic’ in two parishes in Co. Monaghan (Achadh Bog and Coirrín) and Lettercraff / Leitir Creamha ‘hillside of (the) wild garlic’ (alongside Lettercraffroe / Leitir Creamha Rua ‘(the) red Leitir Creamha’ in Co. Galway. We find Corr an Chreamha ‘the round hill of the wild garlic’ anglicized as Corcraff in Co. Cavan and twice as Corracramph, in Cos. Donegal and Leitrim. We also find creamh qualifying the generic element ros, whose semantic range includes ‘point, headland’, ‘(wooded) height’ and simply ‘wood’.

Creamh or wild garlic (Allium ursinum)

Photo © Diana Whaley

The close compound Creamhros – anglicized Croaghros – refers to high ground on the banks of Lough Swilly in Co. Donegal and the open compound Ros an Chreamha – anglicized and then rebranded as Bettyville! – refers to elevated ground near Kanturk in Co. Cork.

Even islands can be named after this popular little plant. Anyone in the vicinity of Westport in Co. Mayo in early spring might fancy a trip out to Clew Bay to see if Crovinish / Creimhinis ‘wild-garlic island’ remains true to its name.

Wild garlic wafting across the centuries

These Irish townland names provide more evidence for the popularity of wild garlic in Gaelic Ireland, further to the special mention it received in the early legal texts. So next time you are tucking into a nice garlicky meal, as well as daydreaming of Lombardy, Tuscany and Venice you might also consider the fact that our Gaelic forebears were just as fond of the very same flavour, in the form of the native creamh.

Text © Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill 2025

Wild garlic by the Ouse Burn in Jesmond Dene, Newcastle upon Tyne

Photo © Diana Whaley

Wild garlic beyond Ireland

Wild garlic is also widely celebrated in other lands and languages. The word creamh found so abundantly in Irish place-names is the same in Scottish Gaelic and appears in place-names such as the stream-name Allt Creamha in Glen Lochay, Perthshire, and Creag Creamha in the Mull of Kintyre, Argyll and Bute. Its Welsh cognate is craf, and this occurs in two Breconshire names: Abercraf, where Craf is a river-name, and Dyffryn Crawnon, the valley of the Crawnon river, from craf and nant ‘stream’. In the lake-name Llyn Crafnant in Caernarfonshire, Crafnant is the nant (either ‘valley’ or ‘stream’) with wild garlic. Craf also gives its name to a whole district in England: Craven in Yorkshire, and incidentally the same root may explain the Italian name Cremona.

A more distant relative of creamh is Old English hramsa, the base for dialect words for the plant including rams, ramps and ramsons. Hramsa seems to underlie many English place-names, for instance qualifying a woodland term in Romsley in Worcestershire, and valley terms in Ramsden in Oxfordshire and Ramsbottom in Lancashire. The difficulty is, however, that the medieval spellings often leave it unsure whether the root is hramsa, ramm ‘a ram (male sheep)’, hræfn ‘raven’, or a man’s name Hræfn. Hence Ramsey in Essex is explained by Victor Watts as ‘Hræfn, raven, ram’s or wild garlic island’. More encouragingly, however, Ramsey in Cambridgeshire has a spelling of Hramesige from around 1000, and this looks like a secure case of hramsa ‘wild garlic’.

As for the word garlic, it is rare and apparently recent in place-names, although it is already present in Old English; it derives from gār ‘spear’ and lēac ‘leek’.

Selected sources

Ireland

Kelly, Fergus (1997), Early Irish Farming, pp. 308-9 (for the ‘garlic feast’), p. 326 (garlic butter).

Logainm.ie (Placenames database of Ireland). The place-name story above is adapted from a post within ‘Featured themes‘. There are many more fascinating items there.

Beyond Ireland

Owen, Hywel Wynn and Gruffudd Prys (2004), The Welsh origins of place-names in Britain

Owen, Hywel Wynn and Richard Morgan (2007), Dictionary of the Place-Names of Wales.

Taylor, Simon et al. (2005), The Gaelic origins of place-names of Britain

Watts, Victor (2004), The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names [Cremona referenced under Craven.]