Every county's name in the language it was named in, what it means, and how to say it. Most of the English names are a clerk's attempt at an Irish sound — Tír Eoghain became Tyrone, Maigh Eo became Mayo. Three of them are not Irish at all: Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow are Norse, and their Irish names are completely different words.
Hover or tap a county for its Irish name; tap through for its history.
Alphabetical by the English name. Where a reading is traditional rather than settled — Ceatharlach, Lú — it says so rather than choosing.
Antrim is Aontroim, Armagh is Ard Mhacha, Cork is Corcaigh, Dublin is Baile Átha Cliath, Galway is Gaillimh, Mayo is Maigh Eo, Tyrone is Tír Eoghain, and so on — the full list, with the meaning and a pronunciation for each, is on this page. Most are the older name; the English versions are mostly clerks' attempts at the sound.
Two of the best-known English county names are Norse, not Irish: Waterford is Veðrafjǫrðr, the ram or windy fjord, and Wexford is Veisafjǫrðr, the fjord of the mudflats. Wicklow is Old Norse too — Víkingaló, the Vikings' meadow. In each case the Irish name is completely different: Port Láirge, Loch Garman and Cill Mhantáin.
Roughly “eev AL-ee”. It is the Irish name of County Offaly, from the Gaelic kingdom of Uí Failghe, the descendants of Failghe, which survived until 1550.
Both are named for the Gaelic peoples and kingdoms that held the land: the Loígis and the Uí Failghe. Under English administration they were renamed Queen's County and King's County, for Mary I and Philip II, and they took the old names back in 1922.
A fifth. Ireland has four provinces called fifths because there were once five: Meath (Mide, the middle) was a province in its own right, with Tara in it, before being absorbed into Leinster.
The Irish name is Doire, an oak grove — Doire Cholm Cille, Colmcille's oak grove. London was prefixed in the royal charter of 1613 when the city was granted to the London livery companies. Both English forms are in official use; the Irish name never changed.
Pronunciations give the everyday Irish-English form, in the same style as the first-name pages; Ulster, Connacht and Munster Irish differ, sometimes a lot. Logainm, the State's placenames database, is the authority for any name here.
Spoken audio is synthesised by ABAIR, the Irish speech project of the Phonetics & Speech Laboratory at Trinity College Dublin — a machine reading the word, not a recording of a speaker. For native speakers in three dialects, Teanglann has recordings.
The 32 counties, county by county · Surnames in Irish · The placename decoder · Towns & cities and what their names mean · How to pronounce Irish