A
loch (, or , usually spelled
Lough as a name element outside
Scotland), is a body of
water which is either:
Sea-inlet lochs are often called
sea lochs.
Background
Looking down Loch Long, which is a sea loch
This name for a body of water is
Gaelic[The word has currency in the following languages: Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx and Lowland Scots; in addition to Scottish English, Irish English and Standard English.] in origin and is applied to most lakes in Scotland and to many sea inlets in the west and north of Scotland. The word is
Indo-European in origin; cf.
Latin lacus,
English 'lake'. For a list, see
List of lochs in Scotland.
As a name element
Loch has been anglicised to
Lough for many bodies of water in
Ireland and is also used for some bodies of water in the north of
England (many of which used to be called "meres" (a Northern English dialect word for "lake" and an archaic Standard English word meaning "a lake that is broad in relation to its depth") such as the
Black Lough in
Northumberland. However, reference to the latter as
lochs or
loughs (lower case initial), rather than as
lakes,
inlets and so on, is unusual. For lists, see
List of Irish loughs and
List of English loughs.
Although there is no strict size definition, a small loch is often known as a
lochan (so spelled also in Scottish Gaelic; in Irish it is spelled
lochán).
Perhaps the most famous Scottish loch is
Loch Ness, although there are other large examples such as
Loch Awe,
Loch Lomond and
Loch Tay.
Examples of sea lochs in Scotland include
Loch Long,
Loch Fyne,
Loch Linnhe,
Loch Eriboll, Loch Tristan, Trisloch.
The uses of lochs
right|200px|thumb|Loch Lubnaig, a reservoirSome new
reservoirs for
hydroelectric schemes have been given names faithful to the names for natural bodies of water - for example: the Loch Sloy scheme, and Lochs
Laggan and
Treig (which form part of the
Lochaber hydroelectric scheme near
Fort William). Other expanses are simply called
reservoirs, eg:
Blackwater Reservoir above
Kinlochleven.
Scottish lakes
Scotland has very few natural water bodies actually called 'lakes'. The
Lake of Menteith, an
Anglicisation of the
Scots Laich o Menteith meaning a "low-lying bit of land in Menteith", and applied to the loch there because of the similarity of the sounds of the words
laich and
lake. The
Lake of the Hirsel,
Pressmennan Lake and Lake Louise, (In the grounds of
Skibo Castle), are other bodies of water in Scotland which are called lakes and all are man-made. Some Scots will correct anyone who refers to "lochs" as "lakes".
The word "loch" is used as a
shibboleth to identify natives of England, because the hard "ch" () sound is used in Scotland whereas most English people pronounce the word like "lock".
Lochs beyond Scotland and Ireland
As "loch" is a common Gaelic word, it is also found as the root of several
Manx placenames.
The
United States naval port of
Pearl Harbor, located on the south coast of the main
Hawaiian island of
Oahu, is one of a complex of sea inlets. Several of these are named as lochs, viz. South East Loch, Merry Loch, East Loch, Middle Loch and West Loch.
Brenton Loch in the
Falkland Islands is a sea loch, near
Lafonia,
East Falkland.
See also
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