Most of the Scottish mountain names are Gaelic, usually a description of
the peak, or its surrounds. Quite often this description will tell you
something about the peak. For instance, the word 'Ban' meets light
coloured or white, so its quite likely that a peak with 'Ban' in the
name is indeed light coloured, and most likely made up of exposed angular
lumps of quartzite. Similarly 'Dearg' translates as red, so the peak
will most likely be of rounded granite. To help you assess peaks in this
way I've created below a translater, which works on the individual words
in the mountain name, and attempts to adjust the grammar to English usage.
I've used the Munros and Corbetts to provide the vocabularly, so it works
for most of them, and will probably work for a few others too.
Type the Gaelic Mountain name here:
Read the English translation here:
In creating this, I've learnt a little more about the structure of Gaelic,
and some new words. I've discovered that the word for stone is similar to
the sound they make when you hit them together 'Chlach', and that a worker
of stone (a stonemason) is a 'Chlach'er or 'Chlachair'.
