Pointack

Pointack # BMO S NO352239 3

    Pontok 1574 x 1603 Campbell 1899, 617
    Pointrik 1596 Campbell 1899, 621 [see Demmins BMO]
    lie burne de Pointok 1601 RMS vi no. 1267 [it forms the east march of ‘the wood of Balmerino’ (silvam de Balmerinoch), ‘as it flows into the Tay’]
    Pointok 1602 RMS vi no. 1323 [lands of Park and Pointack; see discussion]
    Poyntok 1630 Campbell 1899, 625 [‘his lands of Deminge Park and Poyntok’]
    lie Burne de Pointok 1634 NAS GD137/663
    Poyntok 1644 Retours (Fife) no. 679 [Auchmutie of Demmins ‘in terris de Park et Poyntok’]
    Poyntokburne 1655 NAS GD137/664
    Poyntockburne 1676 NAS GD/137/665
    Pointack 1729 NAS GD137/669 [see Birkhill BMO]

? Pictish *pont + ? – ōc

The name may originally refer to the burn, mentioned several times as the Pointack Burn or the Burn of Pointack. If so, it might mean ‘burn with a bridge’. However, it is just as likely that it originally referred to the settlement and lands beside this burn, the burn-name being a secondary formation. In this case it might mean ‘place at a bridge’. It may be compared with Pitpointie, Auchterhouse ANG (NO35 37), which is assumed to contain a Pictish or British word for bridge borrowed from Latin pont- (Watson 1926, 348). Pitpointie, which appears in the record much earlier than Pointack,[96] shows a development of u/o to oi/oy similar to that seen in the latter name. The ending may be a Pictish place- or river-forming suffix (found for example in Cambo KBS, PNF 3, q.v.), or perhaps a diminutive.

    Campbell states that ‘Poyntok-burn ... was the boundary between Birkhill and Balmerino estates’; adding that ‘Park and Poyntok, and Cragingrugie’s fauld, were the same as that afterwards called Demmings or Demmins’ (1899, 642).

    In 1602 all the lands of Park and Pointack, with houses, buildings etc, were described as ‘lying between the wood of Balmerino to the east, Woodflat and Wattiesfauld # and the outfield of the Byres to the south, the said wood of Balmerino to the west, (and) the dyke and wood of Balmerino to the north’ (NAS C2/43 no. 184).[97]

This place-name appeared in printed volume 4