Aber and Inver as place-name elements

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Aber and Inver are common elements in place-names of Celtic origin. Both mean "confluence of waters" or "river mouth". Their distribution reflects the geographical influence of the Brythonic and Goidelic language groups respectively.

1 Aber
2 Inver
3 Syntax
4 List of place-names with Aber and Inver
5 Sources
6 See also

[edit] Aber

Aber goes back to the ancient British language, or Brythonic, which was a p-Celtic language. In Old Welsh it has the form Oper and is derived from an assumed Proto-Brythonic *od-ber, meaning 'pouring away'. It is found in Welsh and Breton, and must also have been common in Pictish.

Place names with aber are very common in Wales, and are found in parts of England, and in Brittany. They are also common on the East coast of Scotland.

In Anglicised forms, aber is often abbreviated: Arbroath for Aber Brothaig, Abriachan for Aber Briachan. In the case of Applecross (first attested as Aporcrosan), it has been transformed by a folk etymology.

[edit] Inver

Inver is the the Goidelic or q-Celtic form, an Anglicised spelling of Gaelic inbhir (likewise pronounced with /v/), which occurs in Irish as innbhear or inbhear, going back to Old Irish indber, inbir, inber. This is derived from the PIE root *bher-, 'carry' (English bear, Latin fero) with the prefix in-, 'into'.

Place-names with inver are very common throughout Scotland, where they outnumber aber-names by about 3:1. They are most common throughout the Western Highlands and the Grampians. It is usually assumed that in many cases, places which originally had a name with aber experienced a substitution, and occasionally this can be verified from historical records. This must be seen in the context of the Gaelic settlment of Western Scotland from Ireland in the early Middle Ages. Place-names with inver are, however, oddly seldom in Ireland, given that the form is originally Irish.

In Anglicised forms, inver occasionally appears as inner: Innerhaddon is a variant of Inverhaddon.

Occasionally, the English name forms are entirely unrelated: Dingwall in Scotland and Arklow in Ireland are both have inver- in their Gaelic forms.

[edit] Syntax

Because Celtic languages place the generic element of a compound (it's a rivermouth) before the specific element (which river), the elements aber and inver normally appear at the beginning of a place name, the opposite of the English (Germanic) pattern. Contrast:

Inver-ness (mouth of the river Ness)
Eye-mouth (mouth of the river Eye)

This explains why Celtic placenames are often stressed on (the first syllable of) the last element (Inverness, Aberystwyth), whereas English placenames seldom are.

A variation occurs when the confluence itself is made the specific element. The names Lochaber and Lochinver both mean 'lake of the confluence'. Here, exceptionally, the elements aber and inver answer the question "which loch?", and so are placed second. This is reflected perfectly regularly in the stress patterns: Lochaber, Lochinver. Similarly, Cuan Inbhir on Clear Island, Co. Cork, means the "ocean of confluence".