I did some further research on place names and sometimes Killeen (or variant spellings of it) can mean “little wood” i.e. coill beag or coillín. Therefore, Killeen might mean little wood. Although, there were no extant woods in the townlands at 1830.

Furthermore, the endings relate to the sizes of the townlands. Killeenmore having an area of 363 acres is indeed much bigger than Killeenbeg which only covers an area of 82 acres. So the “more” and “beg” relate to the land parcels on which they are named (simialr to say O’Connell Street Upper and O’Connell Street Lower).

A few things further on this particular discussion:

1. Kileenmór makes no sense. The English language word for the townland is Killeenmore. The Irish language name would be Cillín Mór, unless our English forefathers made a complete dogs dinner of the anglicisation.

2. Cillín Mór is a bit of an oxymoron. It translates directly as big small church. But, maybe cillín was a particular architectural design of church, so you had big ones and little ones.

The OSI map viewer is down, so can’t comment whether a church actually existed in the area or not.

Anyhow, any update on the flooding down there?

James

At first glance, Kileenmór seems something of an oxymoron. Cillín mór?

Maybe the placename derives from elsewhere? Perhaps a local hermit or saint whose name resembles ‘more’, and may be incorporated into the name of this problematic ‘Morell stream’? Do you have local knowledge? Just curious.