Loch (/lɒx/LOKH) is a word meaning "lake" or "sea inlet" inScottish andIrish Gaelic, subsequently borrowed into English. In Irish contexts, it often appears in the anglicized form "lough".[1] A small loch is called alochan.
Lochs which connect to the sea may be called "sea lochs" or "sea loughs". Some such bodies of water could also be calledfirths,fjords,estuaries,straits orbays.
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This name for a body of water isInsular Celtic[2] in origin and is applied to most lakes inScotland and to many sea inlets in the west and north ofScotland. The word comes fromProto-Indo-European*lókus ('lake, pool'), and is related to theLatinlacus ('lake, pond'), Englishlay ('lake') and Frenchlac, as well as the Italian, Portuguese and Spanish word for a lake,lago.[citation needed]
Lowland Scots orthography, like Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Irish, represents/x/ with⟨ch⟩, so the word was borrowed with identical spelling.[citation needed]
English borrowed the word separately from a number of loughs in the previousCumbric language areas ofNorthumbria andCumbria. Earlier forms of English included the sound/x/ as⟨gh⟩ (compare Scotsbricht with Englishbright). However, by the time Scotland and England joined under a single parliament, English had lost the/x/ sound. This form was therefore used when the English settledIreland. The Scots convention of using⟨ch⟩ remained, hence the modern Scottish Englishloch.[citation needed]
InWelsh, what corresponds tolo islu inOld Welsh andllw inMiddle Welsh (such as in today's Welsh placenamesLlanllwchaiarn,Llwchwr,Llyn Cwm Llwch,Amlwch,Maesllwch), theGoideliclo being taken into Scottish Gaelic by the gradual replacement of muchBrittonic orthography with Goidelic orthography in Scotland.[citation needed]
Many of the loughs in Northern England have also previously been called "meres" (a Northern English-dialect word for "lake", and an archaic Standard English word meaning "a lake that is broad in relation to its depth"), similar to theDutchmeer, such as theBlack Lough inNorthumberland.[3] However, reference to the latter asloughs (lower case initial), rather than aslakes,inlets and so on, is unusual.
Some lochs in Southern Scotland have aBrythonic, rather thanGoidelic, etymology, such asLoch Ryan, where theGaelicloch has replaced aCumbric equivalent of Welshllwch.[4] The same is, perhaps, the case for bodies of water inNorthern England named with 'Low' or 'Lough', or else represents a borrowing of the Brythonic word into the Northumbrian dialect of Old English.[4]
Although there is no strict size definition, a smaller loch is often known as alochan (spelled the same also in Scottish Gaelic; inIrish, it is spelledlochán).[citation needed]
Perhaps the most famous Scottish loch isLoch Ness, although there are other famous ones, such asLoch Awe,Loch Lomond andLoch Tay.[citation needed]
Examples of sea lochs in Scotland includeLoch Long,Loch Fyne,Loch Linnhe, andLoch Eriboll. Elsewhere in Britain, places like theAfon Dyfi can be considered sea lochs. For the mention of Afon Dyfi as a sea loch elsewhere in Britain, additional specific references may be limited, but its estuarine nature aligns with descriptions of transitional waters and reduced salinity environments comparable to sea lochs[5]
Some newreservoirs forhydroelectric schemes have been given names faithful to the names for natural bodies of water. For example, theLoch Sloy scheme and LochsLaggan andTreig (which form part of theLochaber hydroelectric scheme nearFort William). Other expanses are simply called reservoirs, e.g.Blackwater Reservoir aboveKinlochleven.[citation needed]
Scotland has very few bodies of water called lakes. TheLake of Menteith, anAnglicisation of theScotsLaich o Menteith meaning a "low-lying bit of land in Menteith", is applied to the loch there because of the similarity of the sounds of the wordslaich andlake. Until the 19th century the body of water was known as theLoch of Menteith.[6] TheLake of the Hirsel,Pressmennan Lake,Lake Louise andRaith Lake are man-made bodies of water in Scotland, referred to as lakes.
As "loch" is a common Gaelic word, it is found as the root of severalManx place names.[citation needed]
The United States naval port ofPearl Harbor, on the south coast of the mainHawaiian island ofOʻahu, is one of a complex of sea inlets. It contains three subareas called 'lochs' named East, Middle, and West[7] or Kaihuopala‘ai, Wai‘awa, and Komoawa.[8]
Loch Raven Reservoir is a reservoir in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Brenton Loch in theFalkland Islands is a sea loch, nearLafonia,East Falkland.
In the Scottish settlement ofGlengarry County in present-dayEastern Ontario, there is a lake called Loch Garry.[9] Loch Garry was named by those who settled in the area,Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, after the well-known loch their clan is from,Loch Garry in Scotland. Similarly, lakes namedLoch Broom,Big Loch,Greendale Loch, andLoch Lomond can be found inNova Scotia, along withLoch Leven inNewfoundland, andLoch Leven inSaskatchewan.
Loch Fyne is afjord inGreenland named byDouglas Clavering in 1823.
