Shettleston ~ Baile Nighean Sheadna

First published in the Scotsman on 25 March 2017

This district of Glasgow is on record in 1170 as villa filie Sadin and in 1173 as villa inineschadin. These both mean ‘the town of the daughter of Seadan’ and likely reflects an original Gaelic *Baile Nighean (or Inghean) Sheadna. Villa is Latin for ‘town or farm’ and is probably a translation of Gaelic baile, of the same meaning. Filie or filia is Latin for daughter and the second form with inine represents Gaelic inghean, an old form of modern nighean ‘daughter’.

By 1186 the name was already on record as Schedinstun; this still contains the -n- appearing at the end of Seadan which later changed to the -l- we have in the name today. This modern form contains a translation of Gaelic baile (or Latin villa) into Scots toun ‘town’, showing Scots word order. Place-names from the medieval era referring to females are quite rare.

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