DERIVATION OF ‘STRATHKINNESS’

The commonly accepted meaning of the place-name Strathkinness has

been ‘the valley at the head of the waterfall’. But geologist Richard Batchelor

has said, “There are no waterfalls between the source of the Kinness Burn,

near Nydie, and the sea at St. Andrews. Nor could there have been a water-fall

during recorded history, given the slow pace of river erosion’.

Ian Fraser of the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh, and the foremost

expert on Scottish place-names, agrees that the explanation of ‘head of the

waterfall’ is highly improbable. He considers that the view put forward by

Richard Batchelor and David Dorward (who has made a study of Scottish

place-names), that K1NNES comes from the name of the 6th century saint

CAINNECH, who had connections with St. Andrews, could be a valid one and

that it is possible that Strathkinness means the strath, or valley, of KINETH

(KENNETH).

However, Mr. Fraser goes on to say that as Strathkinness is never men-

tioned in connection with CAINNECH and that there is only one reference to

‘fluvius (river or stream) KINETH’, the others all being KINES, the view can

only be a supposition. He adds that little is known about the meanings of

river and stream place-names in Scotland and it is ‘likely that the river name

was at one time early or pre-Celtic, in the tradition of other Scottish river

names’.

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