The term townland, while unknown in the homeland of the English language it is recognised in all parts of Ireland. The townland division is one of the distinguishing marks of Ireland. It is the established local administrative unit and forms part of the address of most people. On the mainland of Ireland an average townland would contain four or five farms, while on the island of Cape Clear, County Cork the divisions would be considerably smaller. The island measures about 3 and half sq. miles and has 16 townlands. There are more than 62, 000 townlands in Ireland and their names usually represent a certain aspect of geography, climate, vegetation, fauna, or of the economy, language, religion, social customs, or history of people who have lived in the place. Townland names, then, are an important source for the history of people; they constitute the identity of Ireland to both native and visitor. The townland pattern was not imposed on Ireland but evolved naturally as part of the gradual social evolution of the country. The townland system goes back at least 800 years. We have documentary evidence that it was in operation when the Anglo-Normans came in the 1170's. The townland is the natural social unit in the country and is bounded, in the main by natural features or long established man-made features, rivers, streams, glens, woods, prominent rocks, old forts and old ditches. Any country person will know the bounds of his own townland. It is part of the common store of inherited local knowledge. It is what forms part of the address of most people in Ireland.
  The term townland has nothing to do with a town in the modern sense, as stated they are administrative units, subdivisions of the parish with defined boundaries. Cork County consists of 23 territorial administrative units called Baronies. Within each Barony are Civil Parishes and within Parishes are Townlands all of which have a unique name and boundaries that were set by the Ordnance Survey in the 1840s. Today’s Irish towns and cities in are collections of Civil Parishes, with parishes being collections of several townlands.
  The basic townland nomenclature was settled before 1600. Occasional additions and other changes have been made to it since and of course many of the names go back far beyond that date. For the most part they are impossible to date satisfactorily, apart from stating the obvious, that they are as old as their first occurrence in writing.
  The most common form of townland name is the usually descriptive one. Such name as Carraig Mhór, big rock, Coill Liath, grey wood, Droim Mór, big ridge could have been coined 200 or 1,200 years ago. However, it is probable that the bulk of townland names date to between 1300 or 1500 and make up the basic nomenclature of the country. Most townland names are derived from names that were coined by Irish speakers and used in daily speech in Irish only.
In the modern world of today local identity and placename heritage is in constant danger of dying out. Decline in fishing, farming methods, expansion of towns, road building, farms being sold, old people with local knowledge were dying out; depopulation on islands and in rural areas and other factors were contributing to the decline of thousands of names in throughout Cork County every year. The poor translation of native Irish placenames has been extremely destructive of Irish language placename heritage. So it was at Cape Clear and in other West Cork islands and all around West Cork in the 1970s.
  In 1976, Cork City native, Éamon Lankford, began collecting minor placenames at Cape Clear and recorded their location on townland and Parish maps. Over a period of thirty years this initiative was to lead to the creation of the only two County Place Name Archives, in Ireland.