Tempan, Paul2010-04-202010-04-202009Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences978-1-55014-521-2http://hdl.handle.net/10315/4037This paper examines the issues involved in establishing the chronology of elements referring to landscape features. Much work has been done on the Irish topographical lexicon in recent decades, notably by Prof. Liam Mac Mathúna, whose approach is rooted in word-field studies. His research has focussed on common nouns occurring in Old Irish and Middle Irish texts. This paper takes a complementary approach by asking what further light the evidence of place-names can shed on the topographical lexicon. It attempts to establish the outlines of a (largely relative) chronology, using the element 'sliabh' as an example. It then goes on to consider some strategies which can help to refine this dating, using the elements 'rinn' and 'ros' from the world-field ‘promontory’. In particular, the analysis of suffixes and tautological names are discussed as resources which can help to construct a relative chronology.enThe following articles are © 2009 with the individual authors. They are made available free of charge from this page as a service to the community under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative Works license version 3.0. For full details go to http://creativecommons.org.licenses/ny-nd.3.0Irish TopographyIrish Toponymysliabh, rinn and rosArticle