SWINKEY BURN

Place-name:Swinkey Burn
Suggested Meaning:earthworm-shaped burn
First elementScots swinky ‘earthworm’
Second elementScots burn ‘stream”
Blaeu Coila (1654):N/A
OS Name Books (1855-57):Swinkey Burn
Location:Ordnance Survey (1898)

Swinkey Burn

Scots swinky ‘earthworm’ + Scots burn ‘stream’

The Ordnance Survey Name Book (1855-57) entry for Swinkey Burn reads -.

Small Stream rising north of Lamb Hill and running in an easterly direction to Afton Water

Map 1: OS Map (1898) Swinkey Burn | Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The Dictionary of the Scots Language entry for swink [1] includes a number of references that could be related to the action of a water-course including ‘to splash about in a container‘ and ‘to make a shaking side-to-side motion‘. It also includes a definition of the dimunitive form swinky as follows –

II. n. In dim. form swinky and by-form swanky: the common earth-worm (Ork. 1929 Marw., Ork. 1972, swinky, swanky).

Of course it should be noted that the example given of swinky ‘common earth-worm’ is from an Orkney source and certainly is not familiar locally.

Taking all of the above into account there is a suggestion of a burn moving from side to side or perhaps a burn shaped like an earthworm, which fits reasonably with the shape of the Swinkey Burn.

The burn [2] no longer flows into the Afton Water but instead into the Afton Reservoir created in the 1930s.

Map 2: OS Map (1953) Swinkey Burn| Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
  • Swinkey Burn
  • Swinkey Burn flowing in the Afton Reservoir

References
[1] Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd. |swinky
[2] Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd.| burn
Maps
By Permission of National Library of Scotland
https://maps.nls.uk/
Images used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.
Map 1: Ordnance Survey Maps – Six-inch 2nd and later editions, Scotland, 1892-1960 (1898)| Swinkey Burn
Map 2: Ordnance Survey, 1:25,000 maps of Great Britain – 1945-1971(1953) |Swinkey Burn
Use of these digitised maps for non-commercial purposes is permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-SA) licence.
Ordnance Survey Name Books
By Permission of Scotland’s Places
scotlandsplaces.gov.uk
Ayrshire OS Name Books (1855-57) Vol. 49|Swinkey Burn