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Kirk is a Scottish and former Northern English word meaning 'church'. The termthe Kirk is often used informally to refer specifically to theChurch of Scotland, the Scottish national church that developed from the 16th-centuryScottish Reformation. Manyplace names and personalfirst andlast names are derived from kirk.
As acommon noun,kirk (meaning 'church') is found inScots,Scottish English,Ulster-Scots and someEnglishdialects,[1] attested as a noun from the 14th century onwards, but as an element in placenames much earlier. Both words,kirk andchurch, derive from theKoine Greek κυριακόν (δωμα) (kyriakon (dōma)) meaning "Lord's (house)". This was borrowed into theGermanic languages in late antiquity, possibly in the course of theGothic missions. At some point,kyriakon, of neuter gender in Greek, became of feminine gender in Germanic languages, perhaps due to influences from theGothic language.
Whereaschurch displaysOld Englishpalatalisation,kirk is aloanword fromOld Norse[2] and thus retains the original mainland Germanic consonants. Comparecognates:Icelandic &Faroesekirkja;Swedishkyrka (where the first ‘k’ was later palatalized as well);Danish andNorwegian (Bokmål)kirke;Norwegian (Nynorsk)kyrkje;Dutch andAfrikaanskerk;GermanKirche (reflecting palatalization before unstressed front vowel);West Frisiantsjerke; and borrowed into non-Germanic languagesEstoniankirik andFinnishkirkko.
As aproper noun,the Kirk is an informal name for theChurch of Scotland, the country's national church and this term is frequently used in the media,[3] in everyday speech and in the church's own literature.[4]The Kirk of Scotland was in official use as the name of the Church of Scotland until the 17th century.Kirk Session is still the standard term in church law for the court of elders in the local congregation, both in the Church of Scotland and in any of the other Scottish Presbyterian denominations.
Even more commonly,The Free Kirk is heard as an informal name for theFree Church of Scotland, the remnant of an evangelical presbyterian church formed in 1843 when its founders withdrew from the Church of Scotland. See:
A pair of rhyming jibes remain from the time of the heated split of the Disruption in 1843, when about a third of the Auld Kirk of Scotland left to form the Free Kirk. The Free Kirkers, who had sometimes given up homes as well as church buildings and started financially from scratch, were taunted with the rhyme: “The Free Kirk, the wee Kirk, the Kirk without the steeple”. This rhyme linking the Free Kirk with the derogatory diminutive "wee" was offensive, and a reply was devised in:The Auld Kirk, the cauld Kirk. The Kirk wi’out the people.[5]
High Kirk is the term sometimes used to describe a congregation of the Church of Scotland that uses a building that had been acathedral prior to theReformation. As the Church of Scotland is not governed bybishops, it has no cathedrals in the episcopal sense of the word. In more recent times, the traditional names have been revived, so that in many cases both forms can be heard:Glasgow Cathedral, as well as theHigh Kirk of Glasgow, andSt. Giles' Cathedral, as well as theHigh Kirk of Edinburgh.The term "High Kirk", however, should be used with some caution. Several towns have a congregation known as the High Kirk that were never pre-Reformation cathedrals. Examples include:
There is no connection between the term 'High Kirk' and the term 'High Church', which is a type ofChurchmanship within theAnglican Communion.
The first court ofPresbyterian polity where the Elders of a particular congregation gather as aSession or meeting to govern the spiritual and temporal affairs of the church.
The verbto kirk, meaning 'to present in church', was probably first used for the annual church services of some Scottish town councils, known as theKirking of the Council. Since the re-establishment of theScottish Parliament in 1999, theKirking of the Parliament has become a fixed ceremony at the beginning of a session.[8]Historically a newly married couple would attend public worship as husband and wife for the first time at their kirking.In Nova Scotia,Kirking of the Tartan ceremonies have become an integral part of most Scottish Festivals and Highland Games.[9]
Kirk is found mainly as an element in many placenames ofScotland,England and countries of largeBritish expatriate communities.[10]
Scottish examples includeFalkirk,Kirkwall and numerousKirkhills andKirktons. Examples in England areOrmskirk andKirkby in Lancashire, andKirkstall,Kirklees andKirklevington in Yorkshire.Newkirk, Oklahoma in the United States is another example.
The element is not only found in place names of Anglo-Saxon origin but also in Anglo-Gaelic Southern Scottish names such asKirkcudbright, a place around aCudbright church. Here, the Gaelic elementcil- (coming from a monk's cell) might have been expected to go with the Gaelic form ofCuthbert. The reason appears to be thatkirk was borrowed into localGalwegian, though it does not seem to have been a part of spoken Gaelic in the Highlands or Ireland.
When the element appears in placenames of the former British empire, a distinction can be made between those where the element is productive (named after a church) or transferred – from a place in Britain.Kirkland, a city in the United States, is an exception, being named after the surname of an English settler,Peter Kirk.
The elementkirk is also used inanglicisations of continental European place names, originally formed from one of the continental Germanic cognates.Dunkirk (French Flanders) is a rendering of the Dutch West-Flemish dialect wordDuunkerke or standard Dutch wordDuinkerke.
Kirk is also in use as both a surname and a male forename. Parallels in other languages are rarer than with placenames, but EnglishChurch and GermanKirch can also be a surname.
