EIRE (AIR-uh)
The
Irish name of the island called Ireland in the English
language
Common clues: Emerald Isle; Dublin's land; Land
of the leprechauns; Cork's place; Hibernia; The Auld Sod; Green
land; Ireland; Joyce's land
Related crosswordese:
ERIN
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
8 times a year
Frequency
in English language:
22407 / 86800
Video: Eire
Éire is the nominative form in modern Irish of the name for the goddess called Ériu in Old Irish, a mythical figure who helped the Gaels conquer Ireland as described in the Book of Invasions. It is still used in the Irish language today to refer to the whole island of Ireland.
Éire is also the official name of the Republic of Ireland, which has sovereignty over most of the island of Ireland.
True-colour
satellite image of Ireland, known in Irish as Éire.
Difference between Éire and Erin
While Éire is simply the name for Ireland in the Irish language, and sometimes used in the English, Erin is a common poetic name for Ireland in English. The distinction between the two is one of the differences between cases of nouns in Irish. Éire is the nominative case, the case that is used for nouns that are the subject of a sentence i.e. the noun that is doing something. Erin is a Hiberno-English derivative of Éirinn, the Irish dative case of Éire i.e. a noun to which something is given, as in the phrase Éirinn Go Brách ((To) Ireland for Ever). It is very common to also see Éireann used in the titles of companies and institutions in Ireland e.g. Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail), Dáil Éireann (Irish Parliament) or Poblacht na hÉireann (The Irish Republic). This is Éire in its genitive case, when it marks possession of another noun or being the most important noun in a multi-noun combination.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Éire".
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