What is the difference between Roslea and Rosslea?

Yorky

Could anyone please explain the following in the County Fermanagh village:

Roslea: Nationalist way of spelling

Rosslea: Unionist way of spelling

The official spelling is Rosslea so what is the significance of the extra 's' that Nationalists find so unacceptable?

europerson

This should be in the North forum. By the way, I only ever heard of it spelled Rosslea.

sudzs

Yorky wrote:

Could anyone please explain the following in the County Fermanagh village:

Roslea: Nationalist way of spelling

Rosslea: Unionist way of spelling

The official spelling is Rosslea so what is the significance of the extra 's' that Nationalists find so unacceptable?

I wouldn't worry about one little 's'

Sure look at the way the Unionists spell Derry!!!

Yorky

Sure look at the way the Unionists spell Derry!!!

And look at the way the Nationalists spell Londonderry!!!

sudzs

Yorky wrote:

And look at the way the Nationalists spell Londonderry!!!

And which would you say was the correct way?

I'd have to say the original!

Yorky

Ordinarily I would go off the map (Londonderry) but due to the pathetic connotations attached to both versions I would say.... Stroke-city.

wheelbarrow

Ulster's naming game exposes cultural gap
A closer look at the complex matter of place aliases

By Linda McKee

19 June 2006

Mention the constituency of East Londonderry to a nationalist and you're
assured of a short, sharp response.

But the Maiden City isn't the only place in Ulster whose name is disputed.

In Fermanagh a host of towns and villages sport alternative spellings -
divided along cultural lines.

Drive through Lisnaskea in the county and watch out for the turn-off to
former US president Bill Clinton's ancestral home, for example.

"What tends to happen is that the road signs are put up by the DoE which is
a branch of government, so they use the official spelling. The official road
sign would have read 'Rosslea', but somebody local has gone with a tin of
white paint and painted out one S," the Impartial Reporter's long-standing
editor Denzil McDaniel explains.

The upshot is that you can visit Rosslea or Roslea, Cooneen or Coonian,
Ederney or Ederny, Aghadrumsee or Adrumsee and Bellanaleck or Belnaleck.

"As I understand it, it goes back to the renaming of Irish place names in
English. The local Catholic population would have stuck to a different
translation of the Irish place names into English. Some of the local
population accepted the translation but adopted a different spelling," Mr
McDaniel said.

"The unionist population tends to go with what the English authorities would
have said, while the nationalists would have used the alternative spelling."

It can be a bit of a headache for cross-community organisations and the
newspapers themselves.

The Impartial tends to use the English spelling, but may change tack when it
comes to Gaelic sports clubs, for example, which use the nationalist style.

"It tended to be over the years that the Impartial would spell things the
official way, but that has slipped. We may spell it the nationalist way in
the sports section, while a news reporter spells it a different way in a
news story.

"The same place can be spelled two or three ways in the same paper. But it's
not as if there's a big difference in how both places are spelled."