Palmerstown wins back ‘W’ as council approves name change

Disaffected west Dublin locals blew a sigh of relief on Tuesday when they received formal notification that the suburb formerly known as Palmerstown will finally be restored to its rightful name.

Variously known as Palmerstown and Palmerston throughout the course of history, a bitter bone of contention was at least partially laid to rest last night, when members of South Dublin County Council recognised the outcome of a plebiscite which sought to definitively change the name of the village to Palmerstown.

The decision was, however, a qualified victory, in that it only affects an area inhabited by 600 residents of the village. The broader hinterland will retain its disputed nomenclature. Long-suffering supporters of the change will be delighted to see it come into effect in any case, having seen a previous attempt fail in 2009.

It sounds like a trivial issue on the surface, but the decision reflects a protracted, disputed and very confusing geographical argument which spans the guts of a millennium.

Traditionally referred to as Palmerstown, the area had, unbeknownst to locals, officially carried the moniker of Palmerston after an ordnance survey of 1863 sought to name it after a British lord of the same title.

The contentious "w" was finally addressed by somewhat pedantic mappers from the Placename Commission of the 1990s, and the changing of maps and road signs to reflect its official title of Palmerston is what ignited the current debate, according to councillor and pro-Palmerstown activist Gus O'Connell.

“The name Palmerstown goes back to the crusaders, some of whom - the Palmers - settled [there], an area of Dublin which then got identified with them,” Mr O’Connell said.

“There’s a very ancient local graveyard going back to the 12th century that has people buried with the name “Palmerstown” on it,” added Mr O’Connell, one of the most ardent campaigners to reinstate the errant “w”.

“It also caused great confusion where people who wanted to get to Palmerstown couldn’t find any signposting telling them where it was.

"You had people coming in the M50 and the M4 looking for Palmerston, which is over in Rathgar, and ending up in Palmerstown because that's what the sign told them," Mr O'Connell said, alluding to some notoriously misleading signage in the area which will be changed over the next while as a result of the decision.

Having eventually righted that historical wrong , the county council had to set another record straight after media reports emerged of campaign bills topping €70,000 for the ballot, which involved just 661 people.

According to officials from South Dublin County Council, the cost of postage envelopes, printing and staffing for the plebiscite, in which just 17 of the 442 votes cast dissented against the change, came to a grand total of €12,000.