Is It Right to Rewrite Dublin’s Place Names?

A row about renaming Herzog Park in Rathgar turned into a much bigger national conversation about how Ireland remembers its past. Do we keep the names we inherited? Do we change them for modern values? Or do we risk losing the clues that explain who we were in the first place? Meanwhile, Dublin’s Liberties are having a moment — and not just because of their famous markets, traders, and characters. A new push to secure UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status has reopened an old argument about who tells the story of the city, and what gets protected as Dublin grows and gentrifies. On today’s Newstalk Daily, Sean Defoe sits down with Dublin South Central Historian-in-Residence Cathy Scuffil — a walking encyclopedia of Dublin 8 — to discuss the real history behind the Liberties, including how tariffs helped define the community, why “Engine Alley” isn’t about engines, and the local origins of the term “tenterhooks.” From Viking settlers to Huguenot weavers, Jewish communities to British imperial markers, Dublin’s map is a storybook. So, what happens when a modern city tries to rewrite some of its own chapters?