{"id":616959,"date":"2026-08-02T17:45:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T17:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/616959\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T17:45:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T17:45:25","slug":"falklands-a-skilled-reconciler-would-come-in-handy-on-our-beautiful-troubled-planet-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/616959\/","title":{"rendered":"Falklands: A skilled reconciler would come in handy on our beautiful, troubled planet \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Cup<\/a> may be over but the fallout continues: Trump<\/a>\u2019s unwanted interventions; Germany\u2019s early exit; football not coming home; Argentina<\/a>\u2019s post-final petulance.<\/p>\n

Not to mention, of course, that banner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Forty-four years after the Falkland Islands made headlines around the world<\/a>, 24 letters written in black paint on a white sheet catapulted the long-standing territorial dispute between Argentina and Britain into the spotlight once again.<\/p>\n

\u201cLas Malvinas son Argentinas,\u201d cried the Albiceleste.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, they aren\u2019t,\u201d replied London and the 3,700-odd Falklanders.<\/p>\n

Another claim to the windswept islands comes from the Mapuche \u2013 an indigenous nation whose ancestral territory encompassed much of what is now Argentina, long before the current state existed \u2013 and whose activists have suggested in the past<\/a> that the Falklands should be transferred to them as compensation for the lands they lost in Patagonia during Spanish and Argentinian colonial expansion.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s agreed there were no human settlements on the isolated Falklands before Europeans arrived, it\u2019s not difficult to understand their point.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s set the competing sovereignty claims aside for now and focus instead on a less controversial \u2013 though no less intriguing \u2013 question: the origins of the islands\u2019 names.<\/p>\n

What do the Falklands and Las Malvinas actually mean?<\/p>\n

Well, you might be surprised to learn that both the English and Spanish versions ultimately have their roots in the Celtic languages.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Paul Howard on the Falkland Islands: \u2018Coming here confirms the stupid wastefulness of it all\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

First of all, let\u2019s take the F-word.<\/p>\n

The English language placename can be traced back to Anthony Cary, aka Viscount Falkland, a wealthy aristocrat who financed an expedition to the islands in 1690, the same year another military campaign left Sasana\u2019s shores for a colony much closer to home.<\/p>\n

Cary, it appears, made some of his fortune pillaging treasure from a wrecked Spanish galleon in the Caribbean<\/a>, briefly became head of the British navy, spent several days imprisoned in the Tower of London on corruption charges, and died of smallpox before reaching 40.<\/p>\n

Initially, a strait running between the two main islands was named after him, and by 1765 the Falkland Islands had become the English name for the entire archipelago.<\/p>\n

But where does the word Falkland itself come from?<\/p>\n

It refers to the small town of Falkland in Fife, Scotland. (The Cary family had received the title from a Stuart king, even though they themselves were based in England and originally from Devon.)<\/p>\n

While there remains some speculation that the name may preserve an older Pictish word, the most widely accepted explanation is that it derives from Gaelic.<\/p>\n

The first element may come either from falach (meaning \u201chidden\u201d) or falc (\u201cto wash\u201d or \u201cheavy rain\u201d), with the second part being the common, lann, which means \u201cplot of land\u201d or \u201cchurch enclosure\u201d.<\/p>\n

A suitably damp toponym, you might think, for a town in the east of Alba and its rugged namesake in the South Atlantic, though in both spots the rain isn\u2019t as relentless as you would imagine.<\/p>\n

The Celtic connections don\u2019t end there, however.<\/p>\n

The Spanish name, Las Malvinas, derives from the French \u00celes Malouines, the title stamped on the islands by musketeer mathematician Louis Antoine de Bougainville in 1764. This imperial explorer would later become the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe<\/a> and brazenly claim Tahiti for Louis XV.<\/p>\n

Malouines itself means \u201cpeople from Saint-Malo\u201d, the Breton port from which de Bougainville\u2019s crew set sail. Today the town is famous for its magnificent walled old town, popular cr\u00eaperies and bustling cider houses.<\/p>\n

But who was St Malo?<\/p>\n

It turns out he was a Welsh monk who is said to have taken part in the legendary voyage of our own St Brendan before travelling to Brittany to spread the gospel. His name likely derives from the Old Breton Machlou, meaning a \u201cbeautiful hostage\u201d or \u201cbright pledge\u201d.<\/p>\n

Once again, the title is quite fitting: a seafaring saint who sailed the high seas lending his name, indirectly, to a distant ocean-bound archipelago.<\/p>\n

While the Celtic language origins of the Falkands-Malvinas may have no impact on the ebb and flow of contemporary geopolitics, they do offer a clear reminder of how meanings and labels evolve across time and tides, how conquest marks both land and sea, and how unlikely linguistic connections can span the globe.<\/p>\n

One story told about St Malo is that he once left an island community in Brittany because of a bitter dispute over land. The people later begged him to return, which he did, and he duly restored peace and order.<\/p>\n

Such a skilled reconciler would come in handy today, you would think, be it in discussions regarding the islands named in his honour or elsewhere on our beautiful, troubled planet. Maybe someone should send a prayer or two in his direction.<\/p>\n

Ella McSweeney returns at the end of the month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Cup may be over but the fallout continues: Trump\u2019s unwanted interventions; Germany\u2019s early exit; football not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[394,9,10,13,14,2220,6,11,12,15,16,5,23550,7,8,1294,17331,2212,65,66,35350,67],"class_list":["post-616959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-argentina","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-france","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-scotland","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-uk","tag-wales","tag-weekendreview","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-world-cup","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}