O'Kelly: Placenames

O'Kelly: Placenames or Owen O'Kelly's book The Placenames of County Kilkenny is a book published by the author in 1969. After his death, a revised version was published by the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1985. They have a scan of the 1985 edition on their website.

In his book, the former teacher lists all baronies in Kilkenny with their townlands and sometimes subtownlands. He gives a description and mentions fieldnames, mainly the ones in the Irish language (mostly with translations). His main source seems to have been Canon Carrigan's Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, enriched with his own research.

His book is an interesting source for placenames and their various spellings. At times, he describes the location of a field, so that the name associated could be mapped with its location. Unfortunately, he is not consistent about spelling of placenames throughout his book, so that a digital search may not yield in the results hoped for.