Blair Collection > Place names in Strathbogie, with notes historical, antiquarian and descriptive

A''a}?ics of Hill and Rivers. 29
abutting upon it. The meaning- I attach to Tap
is no doubt conjectural, and the word ma}- be
broad Scotch ; but, if so, it follows that Tap
o' Noth is modern, and that no old distinctive
name has come down to us of this remarkable hill.
In 'Irish Names of Places' we have the
word in the form tap, meaning 'a round mass or
lump,' and with various terminals it appears in
the names Topped, Tapachan, Tappadan, Top-
pan, and Taplagh, all meaning a round hill, or a
place of lumps or masses (Vol. II., 16).
Noth is of frequent occurrence in place names.
Had it been solitary, we might have suspected
an association with some person or event of
which we have no record ; but the localities in
which the word is found are too numerous, and
too far separated, to warrant such an idea. In
Strathdon we have Invernochty, and in this form
we find it in 1275 ; 80 years later it is Inver-
nochy, and for nearly a century it is Invernothy,
afterwards reverting to Invernochty (Reg. Ep.
Abd.). Near the confluence (invcr) of the
Nochty and the Don is the ' Dun,' or fort, on the
top of a low conical hill, commanding an ex-
tensive view of the Don valley. In the Garioch
appears, in 1494, the name Rothnoth, ' the fort
of the lord of the West Hall,' but I have not
discovered the locality (Rothney?). On the
coast of Gamrie there is a place called Lightnot,
which is given in the records of the Abbey of