v1.0
Published 01/10/24
amar . ON hamarr m. ‘crag, rock’ occurs as an element in several Old Norse loan-names in Scottish Gaelic, e.g. SG Creag Thamar ‘the rock of *Thamar’ NB195423, in Lewis, with a loan-name from ON *Hamar acc. (Cox 2002a, 250), and SG Abhainn Thamara (Abhainn Hamara) ‘the river of Thamara’ (Eng. Hamera River) NG186183, in Skye, with a loan-name probably from ON *Hamara ‘(the) rock-river’, a feminine derivative of hamarr
MacBain (1895, 242) and Taylor (1911, s.v. Hamera) imply the simplex ON *Hamar.
. However, Cox (2002a, 169
Also Cox 1989, 5; 1991, 492; 1992, 138; cf. McDonald 2009, 360.
) suggests that ON hamar was also borrowed into Gaelic as an appellative, as attested in the Lewis place-name Amar na h-Èit NB221376, which he tentatively translates as ‘the crag of the ?cattle’, with the genitive singular feminine article aspirating the specific, but for which one would normally expect SG *èid, if from EG éit ‘cattle, herd of cattle’ (eDIL˄).
It is perhaps more likely that the form Amar na h-Èit (OS 1843–82 Amar na Thèit) represents a generic-initial ON *Hamarrinn Hætti nom. ‘the dangerous crag’, with the masculine singular suffixed article and the weak masculine singular form of the adjective hættr, or similar, the latter part of which was interpreted as a Gaelic specific consisting of article + noun and then used in the creation of new names, viz Creagan na h-Èit ‘the hillock of—’ and Àirigh na h-Èit ‘the sheiling of—’; cf. the nearby SG Amar Sìne [ ̩ãmə ˈʂĩːnə] < ON Hamarinn Sýna acc. ‘the prospect crag’ and other similarly constructed Old Norse loan-names in Scottish Gaelic (Cox 2007c, esp. 17–19).
For loss of initial h-, cf. ON halsa ⇒ SG abhsadh, q.v.