List of Ayrshire place-names beginning with 'E'
Earl Hill
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS723180
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 394m
Elements: SSE earl + SSE hill
Description:
‘A hill associated with an earl or earls’. The NCH website has a long discussion of this name, including the several comital families in the area who might have inspired it as well as the other earl-name in the parish, namely Earlseat Hill (NS657057). Robert Guthrie would see significance in the fact that both this and Earlseat Hill lie very close to an important boundary (in this case AYR/DMF). See Earl Hill, Earlseat Hill, Earlseat Burn – NEW CUMNOCK HISTORY.
It is described in the OS Name Book simply as: ‘A Small Hill in the N.E. Corner of the parish’ (OS1/3/49/5).
Earlseat Burn
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Water
Grid reference: NS664065
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 441m
Elements: en Earlseat + SSE burn
Earlseat Hill
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS657057
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 530m
Elements: SSE earl + SSE seat + SSE hill
Description:
‘A conspicuous hill or a hunting stance (set) associated with an earl’. Sc seat can be a topographical term referring to a conspicuous hill associated with a person or persons (e.g. Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh) or it can be associated with hunting (in this case a place where the earl might have stationed himself during the hunt).
New Cumnock History (NCH) website has a long discussion of this name together with the other earl-name in the parish namely Earl Hill (NS723180). Robert Guthrie, the NCH author, discusses the several comital families in the area and usefully brings together all Earlseat names in Scotland which appear on the OS 6 inch 1st edn map. He would see significance in the fact that both this and Earl Hill lie very close to an important boundary (in this case AYR/DMF). See Earl Hill, Earlseat Hill, Earlseat Burn – NEW CUMNOCK HISTORY.
East Borland
Old Cumnock (OCU)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS588172
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 203m
Elements: SSE east + en Borland
Description:
This was formerly Borland Smithy. An obituary in the Cumnock Chronicle of Mr Hugh Arthur, farmer at East Borland, who died in 1922 aged 78, describes him as having spent ‘the whole of his long life on East Borland and Borland Smithy as it was then called’. The obituary goes on to say that when he was young ‘the public highway then passed through the farm close, and the smithy attached was a recognised stopping-place of the stage coaches … - the smithy making Borland a centre of attraction’. The name seems to have changed in the early 20th century. For full details, see: Ploughing Up Our Past: Borland Smithy (farminginthecumnockarea.blogspot.com)
East Broad Wood
Old Cumnock (OCU)
Classification: Vegetation
Grid reference: NS551196
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 159m
Elements: SSE east + en Broad Wood
Description:
This is the eastern part of the wood called Broad Wood on the Dumfries House Estate. There is another division called Low Broad Wood.
East Chalmerston
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS482070
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 211m
Elements: SSE east + en Chalmerston
East Foredibban Hill
Auchinleck (AUK)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS706191
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 418m
Elements: SSE east + en Foredibban + SSE hill
Description:
The underlying name here must be something like *Dubben (see the forms in Baeu and Roy). It may be that this derives from Scots dub, and its south-west variant dib ‘A pool, esp. one of muddy or stagnant water; a pond’ (DSL: https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/dub). This may be supported by the name of a small burn arising from the hill, Foredib Syke (q.v.). But if so, it is hard to explain the ending -in / -en.
Given the age of the name for this hill we might instead think of an underlying Gaelic name, Dubh-Bheinn ‘the black hill’, paralleled elsewhere in Scotland, e.g. on Jura, though we would perhaps expect the required lenition of beinn to be represented. Nonetheless, this analysis seems to be supported by the hill to the south, bearing the Scots or SSE name Black Hill.
The name is currently only found in East and West Foredibban Hill. It is easy to understand both the existing name + generic constructions here, e.g. Blaeu’s Dubenridge and a putative *Dubbin Hill or *Dibban Hill. But what is the Fore- here? Again, Black Hill may help provide an answer. If the whole series of three hills were once called *Dubh-Bheinn, rendered in Scots as *Dubben / *Dibban, perhaps viewed from the north two of the hills were the Fore-dibban Hill ‘the Dibban Hill to the front’ (later East and West); what is now Black Hill being perhaps *Back-Dibban, a contrastive name which did not survive (though note the burn flanking this hill to the south, Back Lane). We can see Fore and Back in use locally at Rogerton in the same parish. Meanwhile, viewed from the south, perhaps *Dubh-bheinn had been rendered in Scots as ‘Black Hill’.
East Guelt Plantation
Old Cumnock (OCU)
Classification: Vegetation
Grid reference: NS636188
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 262m
Elements: SSE east + en Guelt
Description:
This is the counterpart of West Guelt Plantation.
East Langlands
Auchinleck (AUK)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS509226
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 131m
Elements: SSE east + en Langlands
Description:
This name, West Langlands (q.v.), and Langlands Plantation (q.v.), represent farm buildings on a subdivided settlement, part of the Auchinleck House estate. According to the Appendix of The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb,
Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate, ed. Nellie Pottle Hankins and John Strawhorn
(Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press 1998) 215, East Langlands was originally named Craighead (this name seems to be represented on Blaeu).
RN
East Lowes Plantation
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Vegetation
Grid reference: NS605156
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 232m
Elements: en East Lowes + SSE plantation
East Polquhirter
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS635131
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 205m
Elements: SSE east + en Polquhirter
Description:
This first appears as *Nether Polquhirter in 1654, in contrast to *Over Polquhirter, now West Polquhirter.
East Tarbeg
Ochiltree (OCH)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS489208
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 158m
Elements: SSE east + en Tarbeg
Description:
‘East Tarbeg’ is one of several divisions of the earlier farm of Tarbeg. For full details of Tarbeg and its various divisions, see under Tarbeg OCH. On Blaeu (1654) E. is more likely to represent Easter rather than East.
East Tarelgin
Ochiltree (OCH)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS466198
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 148m
Elements: SSE east + en Tarelgin
Description:
‘East Tarelgin’ is one of the farms created out of the earlier larger farm of Tarelgin, including East and West Tarelgin, and at least for a time, Little Tarelgin. The division may be as early as the 16th century if the reference in 1530 to ‘Tarelgins’ implies there is more than one. For the name of Tarelgin itself, see that entry.
East Woodhead
Old Cumnock (OCU)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS549189
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 175m
Elements: SSE east + en Woodhead
Description:
East Woodhead lay near Roseburn and is no longer named on the OS 2nd edn map (1896). See under Woodhead OCU for more details.
Edge Hill
Old Cumnock (OCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS643171
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 332m
Elements: SSE edge + SSE hill
Description:
‘Hill with a steep edge? hill on the edge?’ From earlier maps it does not appear to be especially steep on any side. It has now been partially destroyed by opencast mining.
Elder Burn
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Water
Grid reference: NS639126
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 236m
Elements: SSE elder + SSE burn
Description:
A burn characterised by elder growing along it.
Elizabeth Isle
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Island
Grid reference: NS469055
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 160m
Elements: pn Elizabeth + SSE isle
Ellergoffe Knowe
Kirkconnel (KCL), New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS680150
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 397m
Elements: G ail + G an + G gobha + Sc knowe
Description:
This name is a puzzle, and it is not entirely clear whether Ellergoffe derives ultimately from Gaelic or Scots. All we can say for certain is that it gives its name to a knowe or hillock. If Gaelic, then it may contain G ail 'rock, cliff', found locally in Alhang and Alwhat (both New Cumnock), while the final element might be G gobha 'a smith', with the medial syllable representing the definite article, so 'rock or cliff of the smith'.
If Scots, the first element may be Sc eller ‘an elder tree or bush’, but none of the forms collected from the informants supports this. The second element as it stands looks like either Sc goff, a variant of guff ‘a fool, simpleton’ (SND); or a variant of Sc guff (3) ‘a puff, a whiff, a current, e.g. of wind, vapour, smoke, air’, although its primary meaning is 'a (disagreeable) smell' (SND). Either way, it is difficult to see how this would work as a place-name, and only a Gaelic derivation is tentatively proposed here.
All the informants seem to treat it as a personal name, with forename and surname. This is not unknown elsewhere in Scotland, where a place-name can jokingly be turned into a personal name e.g. Balbreikie FIF was known locally as Bobby Reekie (see Place-Names of Fife 2, 217 fn).
Elymains
Ochiltree (OCH)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS459159
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 168m
Elements: ? + Sc mains
Description:
It is just possible that this name has developed from a Latin charter form lie Mainis/Maynis etc., in which lie is the definite article (‘the’) used in Latin before a vernacular word or before a name that could also be understood as a word (‘lexically transparent’). It is very unusual for a name to develop in this way, and if this explanation is correct, it must have been coined by someone dealing chiefly with written documents, most likely the laird and his managers, whose usage then went into more general usage. Mains itself is the commonly occurring place-name element referring to the demesne farm, i.e. ‘the home farm of an estate, cultivated by or for the proprietor’, so not let out. Going by the OS map forms, the change from Lie- to Ely- happened in the early twentieth century for reasons that are not clear.
The estate for which this was the mains farm seems to have been Bonnyton, itself originally part of the extensive lands of (Old) Polquhairn. The Mains was later divided, with the lower part called Laigh Mains (‘low mains’), now Laigh Elymains, which see.
Englishman's Stairs
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS482012
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 269m
Enoch Hill
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS562067
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 563m
Elements: G aonach or G eanach + SSE hill
Description:
'Hill, moor' (G aonach) or 'marsh, bog' (G eanach). The former is more likely. The OS Name Book describes it as: ‘An eminence at the western end of High Chang Hill, Enoch Hill and the latter being connected by the Same Ridge, Sometimes is Called, Enoch Hill, alone’ (OS1/3/49/156). This seems to mean that the name Enoch Hill can also include High Chang Hill.
Eriff
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NX498999
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 226m
Description:
On Blaeu (Kyle) a settlement Ridge is in this area.
Eriff
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Settlement
Grid reference: NS515004
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 293m
Eriff Burn
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Water
Grid reference: NX496999
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 213m
Elements: en Eriff + SSE burn
Eriff Burnfoot
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Water
Grid reference: NX497996
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 213m
Eriff Plantation
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Vegetation
Grid reference: NS487009
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 306m
Elements: en Eriff + SSE plantation
Eriff Point
Dalmellington (DAL)
Classification: Coastal
Grid reference: NX498996
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 213m
Elements: en Eriff + SSE point
Ern Cleuch
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS647079
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 521m
Elements: Sc ern + Sc cleugh
Description:
‘A gully or small, narrow ravine associated with an eagle or eagles’. OS Name Book has: ‘A rocky ravine, about 30 chains E of Quintin Knowe, so named because it was once the haunt of eagles’ (OS1/3/49/167).
Ewe Hill
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS594080
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 430m
Elements: SSE ewe + SSE hill
Description:
'A hill associated with ewes', presumably a hill used primarily for grazing ewes. Note the smaller Lamb Hill is situated to its north-east.
Ewe Hill
New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS540127
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 283m
Elements: SSE ewe + SSE hill
Description:
'A hill associated with ewes', presumably a hill used primarily for grazing ewes.