Meaning of The Name
The translation of Dubh Artach is "The Black Rock", artach being a now obsolete Gaelic word for a rock or rocky ground both in Scottish Gaelic and in Irish. The variation between the anglicised forms Dubh Artach and Dhu Heartach is a simple case of false splitting where the final of in pronunciation seemingly is part of the following word, suggesting *hartach or heartach to the untrained ear.
Stevenson believed that 'black and dismal' was a translation of the name, noting that "as usual, in Gaelic, it is not the only one." Adamnan in his 7th-century Life of St Columba poetically calls the rock An Dubh Iar-stac, "The Black Stack of the West". Watson (1926) suggests the root is Old Irish hirt meaning "death", (which he also believes occurs in Hirta, the main island of the St Kilda archipelago), and offers am Duibh-hirteach, meaning "the black deadly one". The skerry was also known as St. John's Rock prior to the construction of the lighthouse.
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