Balcormo

Balcormo CBE S NO515042 1 374 35m SOF

Balcormok 1270 CDS i no. 2577 [Balcormo renders the service of a sergeant with a hawberk; see also APS i, p. 92]
Balcormok 1425 RMS ii no. 20 [in the lordship of Abercrombie (Abircrumby)]
Balcormow 1451 RMS ii no. 426
Balcormo 1493 RMS ii no. 2129
terras occidentalis dimedietatis de Balcrommok 1496 RMS ii no. 2301 [to Master William Abercrombie (Abircrumby) and Janet Scrimgeour (Jonet<a> Skrymgeoure) his spouse ‘the lands of the western half of Balcormo’]
Balcornie c.1560 s 154 [£3]
W. Balcormie 1654 Blaeu (Pont) East Fife [E. Balcormie is not shown]
Balcormo 1654 Blaeu (Gordon) Fife
Balcormo 1753 Roy sheet 18, 1
Balcorma 1775 Ainslie/Fife [Hugh Arnot Esqur.]
Balcormo 1790s OSA, 110 [coal being worked there]
Balcorma 1827 Ainslie/East Fife
Balcormo 1855 OS 6 inch 1st edn
Balcormo Mill 1855 OS 6 inch 1st edn [at NO509040]
Newton of Balcormo 1855 OS 6 inch 1st edn

G baile + pn Cormac

‘Cormac’s farm’. This common G personal name is attested e.g. as the name of a priest of Abernethy PER c.1100 (St A. Lib. 116); and, more relevantly for Balcormo, in the first decade of the thirteenth century one Cormac Luhoc or Lukoc ‘with his whole household’ (cum tota sua habitatione) was removed from the cell (cella) or hospital (hospitali) of the nuns of North Berwick at Ardross ELI (Barrow 1974 no. 2; see also Ardross ELI, below, for more details). Balcormo CBE is only two miles inland from Ardross, and it is conceivable that this was where Cormac Luhoc, who was presumably a Gaelic-speaker, since his by-name Luhoc or Lukoc is probably G luchach ‘mouse-like’, was moved to. If this is the case, then it furnishes important evidence that in Fife place-names were still being formed with baile in the early thirteenth century, during the period when the first toun-names were being coined.

OS Pathf. also has Balcormo Mill (on the upper reaches of the Dreel Burn) and Newton of Balcormo CBE (q.v.). There is also a Balcormo in LAR.

/bəlˈkɔrmo/, locally /bəlˈkɔrmɪ/ or /bəˈkɔrmɪ/

This place-name appeared in printed volume 3