Kirk

For other uses, see Kirk (disambiguation).

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:

• Free Church of Scotland (1843-1900)
• Free Church of Scotland (post 1900)

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 is not 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 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 is not 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.)

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 is 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.