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<\/p>\nSoftware engineer and Irish relearner, Dave McGinn, is exploring the neighbourhoods of Ireland anew with a new app – and he wants you to join him. Kate Demolder writes.<\/p>\n
It was while passing Killenardan, the residential area just west of Tallaght village, that Dave McGinn got his first brainwave.<\/p>\n
“The Irish for it is Cill an Ard\u00e1in, which means the church of the elevated place, or something like that,” he says. “But it just kind of stuck in my head as such a clumsy translation, and one that felt just so\u2026 crude.”<\/p>\n
Through further research, McGinn soon began imagining the placename further, and how it got to where it is in modern day. “I just began imagining the colonial powers at the time asking locals what the name of this area was, and then trying to dismissively write down some variation in a way that made sense to them. Then, I imagined that happening throughout the whole island, and that several hundred years later, we’re still using these colonial references\u2026 And, that we don\u2019t have to.”<\/p>\n
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This thinking produced Baile Beo, the new free-to-download app intended to restore Irish logainmneacha by making them more accessible, as well as describing the story hidden deep behind them.<\/p>\n
“This information is available through websites for local authorities, local history groups, tourism websites, parish websites, and so on,” he says. “So the app aims to consolidate all of that to one location, as well as get people to realise the importance of the places they drive through, even if they have no intention of stopping.”<\/p>\n
Baile Beo first originated as a personal project for McGinn, who began engaging with Irish lessons some two years ago. A History & Computer Science alumnus, the Irish language was never on his radar until he began noticing its importance in history books, as well as on the road signs that passed him between his and his parents\u2019 house.<\/p>\n
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“Something was, I guess, reawoken in me,” he says. “Mainly around what seemed like crude translations of Irish words to similar-sounding English ones. That really kickstarted an interest and passion for the culture, and more broadly, connecting the language with what has happened, for hundreds of years, all around us.”<\/p>\n
A software engineer by trade, McGinn regularly takes to creating apps to fix problems based on personal curiosities. “Mostly just scratching itches that I have myself,” he says. “So when I started sniffing around the Irish stuff, I discovered logainm.ie, which is the canonical source for placenames. I realised they had open data available for use, and thought that\u2019s a good starting point.”<\/p>\n
For McGinn, the initial drive was to list and decode place names around Ireland. However, Baile Beo has advanced to include local historical facts, archaeological data and vintage photographs.<\/p>\n
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“The work is about trying to get this kind of data into a state that people would actually be interested in,” he says. “It\u2019s more user-friendly than, say, latitude and longitude coordinates, so I can be kind of confident about that as a foundation. Then there are plans to layer some other things on top of it.”<\/p>\n
Baile Beo arrives at a time when deprioritising colonial place names has entered public favour. Earlier this year, Conradh na Gaeilge launched AthGhael\u00fa, a campaign which aims to encourage people to use Irish place names instead of English place names in all aspects of life.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Irish activist group Misneach, originally founded by M\u00e1irt\u00edn \u00d3\u2019Cadhain, has erected a slate of symbolic alternative signs to protest housing crises and colonial place names. Further from home, a 2015 video of Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi refusing to use the term ‘The Middle East\u2019 due to its colonial bent recently went viral.<\/p>\n
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Baile Beo is also a natural descendant of the work of the likes of Manch\u00e1n Magan and Blindboyboatclub, who have been instrumental in mining the connection between modern parlance and the country\u2019s past.<\/p>\n
In his 2020 bestselling book Thirty-Two Words for Field, Magan writes: “Irish has a rich store of words that offers a more soulful and nature-connected way of seeing the world. It lets you live more deeply in your environment.”<\/p>\n
McGinn, a man hesitant to use the term historian to self-describe, insists that his is a modest contribution, if any at all. “It\u2019s just an interest of mine,” he says, shyly. “I\u2019m not doing the work of the likes of logainm.ie, who have a team of trained people with primary documents to work from. I\u2019m just trying to get together a collection of disparate sources and put them all in one place.”<\/p>\n
As well as these sources, Baile Beo boasts a growing list of features, including a new one which allows users to enquire about places for McGinn to research with their approval. “I’ve had a few of them come in, and it’s still early days, but I’d like to grow that more,” he says.<\/p>\n
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To date, he has made sense of a suite of Irish place names \u2013 such Sceich\u00edn an Rince, “named from a whitethorn bush where young people would go to dance”; this became Skeheenarinky, which sounds and looks silly, and means nothing” \u2013 with his primary drive centring around the idea that Irish names are rich with meaning, history and significance, all of which gets lost through English names.<\/p>\n
“When I’m driving on say the N7, I’m conscious that I pass dozens of tiny towns, any of which could have Norman history, Viking history, famine history, whatever. It almost feels disrespectful to pass them and never consider them. In an ideal world, I’ll get a team together, and we could bring them back to what they should be. Because I’m not an authority on this, but I do have an interest, and I know I\u2019m not the only one.”<\/p>\n
To date, Baile Beo has had some 1500 downloads and has garnered a number of users who regularly use the app to check in. “Right now, I have someone from a church in Ballykelly, and someone in Mitchelstown, so when I get the chance, I hope to find out the reason they\u2019re named what they are.”<\/p>\n
The app\u2019s regular users are deeply passionate. “All of the current features I have are based off of what subscribers have asked me to add,” he smiles. “There\u2019s definitely an appetite out there, which is really good to see.”<\/p>\n
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\nBaile Beo<\/p>\n
The process of anglicising Irish place names began in the early 19th century, following the 1800 Act of Union, which saw towns being renamed as part of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland from 1824. The famine soon followed, decimating the remaining Irish-speaking population.<\/p>\n
“This provided fertile ground for Donegal playwright Brian Friel\u2019s 1833-set opus Translations, in which the play\u2019s erudite schoolmaster, Hugh, refers to Irish as “a syntax opulent with tomorrows”.<\/p>\n
Today, Hugh would likely be thrilled with the language\u2019s recent resurgence. However, much like McGinn, he might also be wary of the flag\u2019s more modern political affiliations. “There\u2019s an awful lot of messy political stuff associated with the flag at the minute, much of which tries to make certain people feel unwelcome,” he says.<\/p>\n
“You hear people say that migrants or foreigners are responsible for letting the Irish language slip, but I couldn\u2019t disagree more. It\u2019s our language, we\u2019re responsible. The good thing about that is that we can bring it back into daily use and prominence; we have full control over it.”<\/p>\n
![\"Map](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0024aaf2-614.jpg\"\/)
\nMap Of Ireland From The History Of Ireland By Thomas Wright, Published In London Circa 1854.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, Baile Beo\u2019s subscribers tend to favour McGinn\u2019s point of view. “There\u2019s a huge appetite for Irish culture and the language out there,” he says. “And typically the people who are enthusiastic about that are open to everyone getting involved.”<\/p>\n
Baile Beo is available to download for both iPhone and Android, with plans for a premium tier, which would add the likes of a route planner, in place for later this year. “We already have 25 people signed up for that, so it\u2019s great to see that enthusiasm already.”<\/p>\n
What started as a personal project – and a way for McGinn to follow his own nose- has grown legs significantly. However, as per the app\u2019s creator, the singular reasoning behind it all has remained the same throughout.<\/p>\n
“All I\u2019m trying to do is give people a better understanding, appreciation and knowledge of the historical identity of the towns they’re passing through,” McGinn says. “And just an awareness of all the human habitation that went there. Say, if you’re looking at just a field, you might think it\u2019s nothing special. But now, with the app, you can see that there\u2019s a standing stone there that’s 1000 years old. Or a hill that was the site of something huge.”<\/p>\n
He pauses before passing one final thought: “There\u2019s just so much out there that we may never know about because we\u2019re simply passing through. This is my way of contributing to that inaccessibility. Because we shouldn\u2019t stop ourselves from reading Shakespeare, just because we don\u2019t have the words.”<\/p>\n