Rockall is an uninhabitable granite islet situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, 300km west of Soay (Scotland) and 700km south of Iceland; it and the nearby skerries of Hasselwood Rock and Helen's Reef are the only emergent parts of the Rockall Plateau. The rock was formed by magmatism as part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province during the Paleogene.
The origin and meaning of the islet's name Rockall is uncertain. The Scottish Gaelic name for the islet, Ròcal, may derive from an Old Norse name that may contain the element fjall, meaning 'mountain'. It has also been suggested that the name is from the Norse *rok, meaning 'foaming sea', and kollr, meaning 'bald head'—a word which appears in other placenames in Scandinavian-speaking areas. Another idea is that it derives from the Gaelic Sgeir Rocail, meaning 'skerry of roaring' or 'sea rock of roaring', although rocail can also be translated as 'tearing' or 'ripping'.
The Dutch mapmakers Petrus Plancius and C. Claesz show an island called Rookol northwest of Ireland on their Map of New France and the Northern Atlantic Ocean (Amsterdam, c. 1594). The first literary reference to the island, which is called Rokol, is found in Martin Martin's A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, published in 1703. This book gives an account of a voyage to the archipelago of St Kilda, and Martin states: "... and from it lies Rokol, a small rock sixty leagues to the westward of St Kilda; the inhabitants of this place call it Rokabarra."
The name Rocabarraigh is also used in Scottish Gaelic folklore for a mythical rock which is supposed to appear three times, its last appearance being at the end of the world: "Nuair a thig Rocabarra ris, is dual gun tèid an Saoghal a sgrios" ('When Rocabarra returns, the world will likely come to be destroyed').
Rockall's name has also been used in Irish mythology; one story describes how legendary giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) scooped up a chunk of Ireland to fling at a Scottish rival. It instead missed and landed in the Irish Sea – the pebble left behind formed Rockall, while the clump became the Isle of Man and the void left behind filled with water and eventually became Lough Neagh.
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