Cluain Aodha

Cluain is one of the most productive elements in Irish place names — a sheltered, well-watered meadow or riverside pasture, the kind of fertile ground that distinguished itself from surrounding scrub or bog. It appears in Clones, Clondalkin, Clonmacnoise, and hundreds of others. Here the meadow belonged to, or was associated with, a man named Aodh — anglicised as Hugh — one of the most common m...