Everything about Kirk totally explained
Kirk can mean "
church" in general or the
Church of Scotland in particular. Many place names and personal names are also derived from it.
Basic meaning and etymology
As a
common noun,
kirk is the
Scots and
Scottish English word for '
church', attested as a noun from the 14th century onwards, but as an element in placenames much earlier. Both words,
kirk and
church, derive from the
Koine Greek κυριακόν (δωμα) (kyriakon (dōma)) meaning
Lord's (house), which was borrowed into the
Germanic languages in late antiquity, possibly in the course of the
Gothic missions. (Only a connection with the idiosyncrasies of
Gothic explains how a Greek neuter noun became a Germanic feminine.) Whereas
church displays
Old English palatalisation,
kirk is likely to be a
loanword from
Old Norse and thus has the original mainland Germanic consonants. Compare
cognates:
Icelandic &
Faroese kirkja;
Swedish kyrka;
Norwegian &
Danish kirke;
German Kirche;
Dutch kerk;
West Frisian tsjerke; and borrowed into non-Germanic languages:
Estonian kirik and
Finnish kirkko.
Church of Scotland
As a
proper noun,
The Kirk is an informal name for the
Church of Scotland, the country's national church.
The Kirk of Scotland was in official use as the name of the Church of Scotland until the 17th century, and still today the term is frequently used in the press and everyday speech, though seldom in the Church's own literature. However,
Kirk Session is still the standard term in church law for the court of elders in the local parish, both in the Church of Scotland and in any of the other Scottish Presbyterian denominations.
Free Kirk
Even more commonly,
The Free Kirk is heard as an informal name for the
Free Church of Scotland, an evangelical presbyterian church formed in 1843 when its founders withdrew from the Church of Scotland. See:
High Kirk
High kirk is the term sometimes used to describe a congregation of the Church of Scotland which uses a building which was a
cathedral prior to the
Reformation. As the Church of Scotland isn't governed by
bishops, it also has no cathedrals in the episcopal sense of the word. In more recent times, the traditional names have been revived, so that in many cases both forms can be heard:
Glasgow Cathedral, as well as the
High Kirk of Glasgow, and
St. Giles' Cathedral, as well as the
High Kirk of Edinburgh.
The term High Kirk should, however, be used with some caution. Several towns have a congregation known as the High Kirk which have never been pre-Reformation Cathedrals. Examples include
Paisley,
Dundee (where the High Kirk isn't the historic
Dundee Parish Church (St Mary's)), Old High St Stephen's in
Inverness and Stevenston High Kirk in
Ayrshire.
(There is no connection with the term
High Church, which represents a grouping within Anglicanism.)
Kirking ceremonies
The verb
to kirk, meaning 'to present in church', was probably first used for the annual church services of some Scottish town councils, known as the
Kirking of the Council. Since the establishment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999, the
Kirking of the Parliament has become a fixed ceremony at the beginning of a session.
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In Nova Scotia,
Kirking of the Tartan ceremonies have become an integral part of most Scottish Festivals and Highland Games.
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Place names
Like words meaning "church" in other languages,
kirk is found as an element in many place names in
Scotland and northern
England, and in countries with large
Scottish expatriate communities. Examples include
Falkirk or
Kirkwall in Scotland,
Kirkstall in England and
Newkirk, Oklahoma in the United States. For a fuller list, see
Kirk as a placename element.
What may be slightly surprising is that this element is found not only in place names of Anglo-Saxon origin, but also in some Southern Scottish names of Gaelic origin such as
Kirkcudbright (where the second element is the
Gaelic form of "Cuthbert"). Here, the Gaelic element
cil- (church, monk's cell) might be expected. The reason appears to be that
kirk was borrowed into
Galwegian Gaelic, though it was never part of standard Scottish Gaelic.
When the element appears in placenames in the former British empire, a distinction can be made between those where the element is productive (the place is named because of the presence of a church) and those where it's merely transferred (the place is named after a place in Scotland).
Kirkland, Washington is an exception, being named after a person.
The element
kirk is also used in
anglicisations of continental European place names originally formed from one of the continental Germanic cognates. Thus
Dunkirk (
France) is a rendering of an original Dutch form,
Duinkerke.
See: David Dorward,
Scotland's Place-names, 1995, p.82f. ISBN 1-873644-50-7
Personal names
Kirk is also in use as both a surname and a male forename. For lists of these, see
Kirk (surname) and
Kirk (given name). Parallels in other languages are far rarer than with placenames, but English
Church can also be a surname.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Kirk'.
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