Even though Irish scholars have been working to establish authoritative Irish place names since the late-nineteenth century Gaelic Revival there is still. no agreement on how to spell the place name: Schull/Skull or on the Irish language version of the name. The establishment of the Irish Place Names Commission in 1946 put this work on a formal basis taking over the task from the amateur language enthusiasts. The result of this work is a number of Place Name Orders, from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Cork County being one of them, issued in 2012. This Order lists Skull as the proper English language name and spelling for the town, civil parish, electoral division and townland and An Scoil as the proper Irish name for the village. This is clearly inconsistent as well as being nonsensical because there is no commonality between the two names. Skull is obviously not derived from An Scoil. If it was, it would have been translated as Anskull or similar. And as for the Scoil Mhuire form, well that is clearly nonsense. There was no ancient monastic school in Schull and dedication Mary was the fantasy of Schull P.P. Fr. John O’Connor at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth century.

If you would like to know more about the Schull/Skull placename: www.buythebook.ie/this-is-the-mizen/