Something that's always baffled me about the name of hurling

[Eamonnca1]

I always understood it that the people who invent something usually get to name it in their language.  It used to be that an eating house was somewhere you went at fixed hours to eat at the same table as others and you ate what was put in front of you.  The French invented the idea of a place where you could eat whenever you liked, have a table to your own party, and have a menu to choose from. They got to name the thing a "restaurant" and that's the word that made its way into English and probably other languages too. 

Dutch-speaking South Africans invented a system of segregation by race that required blacks to produce paperwork before they could enter certain areas and kept them out of other areas completely, so in English the system was known by the Dutch word "apartheid."

And so on.

Well the Irish invented a stick-and-ball game played predominantly in the air that involves carrying the ball balanced on the end of the stick, and we called it "iomanacht".  So how did this get anglicised to "hurling"?  And why is it that when we translate to other languages when talking about our game we use the English word and not the Irish word?

I can understand how the northern variant of the game was anglicised to "commons" (the Scots Gaelic word for the similar game of Shinty is Cammanacht) but I don't understand where this H word came from.  And what's the etymology of "Shinty"?  Why wasn't Cammanacht anglicised to a word like "commons"?  Where did the S word come from?

Anyone...?

[Never beat the deeler]

Surely its because you play it with a hurl

[Eamonnca1]

I wonder if it's to do with the "golden age of hurling" when the games were gambling events sponsored by the Anglo Irish gentry.

[seafoid]

Iomanaoicht and cammanachd are the same word. Camogie probably means small caman.
When Cusack got around to codifying the games the strongholds of hurling had been speaking english for at least 100 years. Hurling probably comes from some Tan who thought the ball was thrown with the stick.

[johnneycool]

Iomanaoicht and cammanachd are the same word. Camogie probably means small caman.
When Cusack got around to codifying the games the strongholds of hurling had been speaking english for at least 100 years. Hurling probably comes from some Tan who thought the ball was thrown with the stick.

I thought I read on here somewhere or more than likely AFR that the landed gentry all had their hurling teams picked from the farm workers and they played games against other landed gentry teams in the areas of good arable land in Kilkenny and Tipp. I'd suggest one of these landed gentry gave the anglicized word hurl, to throw or propel an object to the game as they sat quaffing bulmers and blaa bread.

[AZOffaly]

There is that theory that you need good land (historically) to play hurling, whereas bad land was fine for football. I'm not sure if this is another 'hurling snob' theory, but I wonder is there something to it. there must be something to the hurling 'pockets' that exist. Wexford, Kilkenny, Tipp, Waterford, East Cork,  West Laois, West Offaly, East Galway, East Clare. North Kerry. I wonder if we did a map and overlay it on a dairy map of Ireland, or a crop farming map of Ireland, would we see a pattern? We all know South Kerry, West Galway, Mayo, Donegal, West Cork, Sligo etc are all full of sheep with different length legs as they cling to the mountains.

[LondonCamanachd]

I think Caman derives from 'bent' or 'hooked', and 'iomain' from d'driving' or 'urging', so originally every sport would have been 'iomain', but as the other sports became codified, they were named by non-gaelic speakers, so the names are either translated (ball-coise, for football), or transliterated (e.g. rugbaidh), leaving iomain as the gaelic sport, named by gaels.

Shinty is supposed to derive from 'sinteag' which has a similar athletic-y meaning to 'iomain', although more like 'leaping' or 'sprinting'.

In Cornwall, hurling is the name for their traditional proto-football.

[Zulu]

I read the piece that deiseach linked about the rebirth of hurling and it seems hurling sprang from a hockey-like game called hurley (shinty for all the world), isn't (modern) hurling a mixture of other stick and ball sports? I'd doubt any modern game is reflective of the original sports that inspired them.

[Eamonnca1]

Well I've read the book A History of Hurling which is thoroughly researched, and apparently in the landed gentry era there was no handling of the ball, but balancing it on the stick was a major part of the game. 

Haven't read the article linked by Deiseach, which thread is that on?

[LondonCamanachd]

I read the piece that deiseach linked about the rebirth of hurling and it seems hurling sprang from a hockey-like game called hurley (shinty for all the world), isn't (modern) hurling a mixture of other stick and ball sports? I'd doubt any modern game is reflective of the original sports that inspired them.

Was there ever a 'rebirth' of hurling?

Shinty history has it that modern shinty started when someone wrote down the rules of something that had always been there - I'd assumed that hurling was always played, and the GAA just ensured that everywhere in Ireland played to the same rules of hurling.

[Zulu]

Well I've read the book A History of Hurling which is thoroughly researched, and apparently in the landed gentry era there was no handling of the ball, but balancing it on the stick was a major part of the game. 

Haven't read the article linked by Deiseach, which thread is that on?

http://www.dublinheritage.ie/media/how_dublin_saved_hurling_text.html

[neilthemac]

Great link there.
Good reading!