A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
Lú· Irish · main form · validated name
Louth· English · main form
Place & story
A smaller scale of naming
Louth County Council’s Field Names Project groups names by townland and civil parish and records associations with farming, industry, wildlife, relative position and archaeology. Such names can identify meaningful places too small to appear as separate settlements. They are valuable evidence of local usage, but a remembered field name is not automatically a legal townland name or a boundary recognised by every historical document.[2]
Language needs a local context
The project reports a substantial variation in Irish-language naming, with a particularly high proportion in the Omeath material compared with its overall collection. That is a finding about the names gathered by the project, not a census of the language spoken by every past resident. Preserve the recorded form, locality and informant or source where supplied. A translation detached from that context can lose the distinction between an old name and a later explanation.[2]
Geology and the county landscape
The council’s geological account distinguishes much of the lowland bedrock from the varied rocks of Cooley, including granite, granophyre and gabbro. The county therefore contains different physical settings despite its small area. Geology can help explain a landscape, but it should not be used to invent a placename meaning. For family research, field-name evidence works best beside a documented townland, parish, property and date, refining a location already supported by records.[3]
Figures cover the whole county including its cities. CSO recommends this series for long-term comparison, although minor boundary changes have occurred.
View population figures
County Louth, including its cities — census population
placenames