Make sure your noggin is screwed on. We’re going on a alcohol-fuelled journey involving eggnog and ending up in Sallynoggin, Co. Dublin.

Naggins. Now there’s a word you can’t avoid during your teen drinking years in Ireland. At 200ml the naggin is the young sidekick of the flagon but nonetheless occupies an influential place in our society – so influential that an ultimate ranking of naggins has even been created: https://lovindublin.com/feature/the-definitive-ranking-of-naggins-from-worst-to-best

Naggins are easy enough to come by in Ireland but their etymological history is more elusive. Most sources identify it as a variant of British English noggin which is used (albeit rarely) to denote a small wooden drinking cup.

The dawn of the noggin apparently dates back to the early-mid 17th century but the majority of modern dictionaries claim it has an unknown origin. However, a helpful man called Walter Skeat compiled the Concise Dictionary of English Etymology in 1888, where he claims that noggin is of Celtic origin and comes from the Irish noigin or Scottish Gaelic noigean.

However, just a few years later in 1896, Skeat was contradicted by the Scottish philologist Alexander MacBain. In his Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language  MacBain claims that “Skeat thinks the English are the borrowers [from Irish noigin]; but this is unlikely.” MacBain says instead that Irish noigin actually comes from English noggin (although he doesn’t say much more on the matter).

Back over in England noggin stemmed from nog, which used to mean a strong ale and is, of course, still preserved in eggnog, although the ale/nog part has now been (thankfully) swapped for rum. ‘Egg-ale’* does sound slightly less appealing/festive.

Nog soon came to mean a small measure of ale, not just the ale itself, and a noggin (as a small drinking cup) seems to have been where you put the nog…in… 😐

My thoughts are that noggin’s cup-like properties eventually led to it becoming a word for head. The use of container-esque words for the head is not uncommon cross-linguistically. The word head actually comes from Proto Indo European (PIE) *káput-, a variant of *kapōlo- (“head, bowl”). Carafe and boule can both mean ‘head’ in French, German Kopf ‘head’ is related to English cup and a ‘head shot’ is basically the same as a ‘mug shot’.

Over in Co. Dublin, some say there was a woman called Sally who used to give out free ale from her pub, leading to the naming of the village of Sallynoggin**. This is quite improbable…

The original Irish place names are usually a reliable starting point but it seems in this case that the Irish name (An Naigín) was created after the English name ‘Sallynoggin’. There is another translation of Sallynoggin “Sail an Chnocáin” ‘the hillock of the willow/ willow hill’ but the syntax is wrong in Irish, surely it should be “Cnoc na Saileach”…

The Placenames Database of Ireland (logainm.ie) claims to have solved the mystery – the original ‘Sally Noggins’ were actually a row of small timber-framed houses. Noggin appears in the English Dialect Dictionary to mean ‘the clay and sticks, or bricks used to fill the interstices of half-timbered houses’. Logainm say that, ‘in other words sally-rods (willow rods) may have been used in the construction of the houses’. The generous barmaid Sally therefore has nothing to do with this story as the Sally part comes from Latin salix ‘willow’.

 

 

Nagging someone is apparently completely unrelated and comes from the idea of ‘gnawing’ at someone.

*If you are curious about the ale and egg combination I suggest this hair conditioner https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ingredients-Treatment-Conditioner-Weightless-Thailand/dp/B00ES8ODXA

**location of Sallynoggin provided here 

References:

https://www.logainm.ie/en/127101

http://www.anacreofpints.com/the-naggin/

MacBains’s Etymological Dictionary online at http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/

https://www.eater.com/2016/12/20/13796632/eggnog-history-ingredients-alcoholic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallynoggin

 

Picture credits:

http://eatslikeaduck.com/eggnog-on-cereal/

cartoonstock.com