The Northern Ireland Place-Name Project (NIPNP) has been based in Queen’s University, Belfast since 1987. The main aim of the project is to research the origins and meanings of local place-names, based on a corpus of over 30,000 names of settlements and physical features which also contains over 130,000 historical references to these names derived from sources stretching over two millennia, from Ptolemy’s Geography, c.150AD, to the first Ordnance Survey conducted in Ireland between 1824 and 1846.  The most detailed data in the corpus relates to the historical administrative system: townlands, civil parishes, baronies and counties (in ascending order). These are the names which are the most ancient on the whole and for which there is the greatest amount of historical evidence. 

Our searchable database is available to the public at www.placenamesni.org and contains over 30,000 Northern Ireland place-names in total (i.e. townland names and names of physical features, hamlets and settlements, etc). Our preliminary analyses for completed townland names are uploaded onto the website on a monthly basis. We welcome enquiries from the public via email to townlands@qub.ac.uk and are equally keen to hear from members of the public who have information to share on local place-names. We also disseminate our findings through daily tweets and occasional blog posts via our twitter account by clicking here or by following us at @placenamesni