Garvock

Garvock DFL S NT102876 2

Garuoc 1230 x 1240 Dunf. Reg. no. 199 [3 acres of marsh to the north of Garuoc]
Garuoc 1267 x 1275 Dunf. Reg. no. 316 [the Lyne Burn is described as the burn which comes from Garuoc]
(Andrew Melville of) Garvok Wode 1595 Dunf. Reg. p. 494
Garvock 1642 Gordon MS Fife
Garuock 1654 Blaeu (Pont) West Fife
Garvok 1654 Blaeu (Gordon) Fife
Garvick 1753 Roy sheet 17, 5
Garvock 1775 Ainslie/Fife
Bonnyton of Garrock 1785 Sasines no. 1276
Garvoch 1790s OSA, 314
Bonnytown of Garvock 1811 Sasines no. 8954

G garbh + G – oc

‘Rough place’. For a discussion of G garbh with other locational suffixes such as –ach, see Watson 1926, 118. It survives today in the name Garvock Hill and various street-names in the eastern suburbs of Dunfermline.

In the late eighteenth century a division of Garvock appears called Bonnytown of Garvock etc. (see above 1785 and 1811). This contains the Sc bondtoun ‘farm or settlement of husbandmen or smallholders’.

There were important woodlands at Garvock (and neighbouring Touch DFL) throughout the medieval and into the modern period, and this has left its mark in the local toponymy. Besides the obvious Garvok Wode (1595 Dunf. Reg. p. 494), there is mention of Forrester Leys, close to Chapel-well (for which see DFL Introduction above) and Wood Acre in connection with half the lands of Touch in 1566 (Chalmers 1844, vol. 1, 158, quoted Pitcairn 2000, 383). Chalmers (loc. cit.) also states that the burgesses of Dunfermline, having a right to cut wood on the estate of Garvock, stripped it of its wood following the great fire of Dunfermline in 1624. Despite this, Wood and Wards of Garrock are still mentioned in 1787 (Sasines no. 1554). While nearby on the Lyne Burn is Woodmill (Woodmill 1775, Ainslie/Fife), which has given its name to a suburb and school to the south. The strangest of the names connected with these woodlands must be Transy, an abbreviation of Transylvania, a Latin name meaning ‘beyond the wooded country’, coined probably with tongue in cheek when there was still enough woodland around to warrant it. It is first recorded in 1781 as ‘part of Garvock called Transylvania’ (Sasines no. 224), and in 1812 as ‘part of Garvock called Transylvania thereafter to be named Transy’. It is marked as Trancy on SGF (1828). The name survives in the Dunfermline street-names Transy Grove and Transy Place.

/ˈgarvɔk/ or /ˈgarvək/

This place-name appeared in printed volume 1