Longitude: -9.656275, Latitude: 51.763896, Easting: 85702, Northing: 58075, Prominence: 15m,  Isolation: 0.3km
ITM: 485677 558140,   Short or GPS IDs, 6 char: ChSETp, 10 char: ChSETp
Bedrock type: Purple & green sandstone & siltstone, (Caha Mountain Formation)
Notes on name: Unlike Caha itself, this peak is located on the main ridge of the range. Ceacha is not a word to be found in Irish dictionaries. O’Donovan noted its similarity to ceachair, which can mean ‘quagmire’, and the Caha plateau, dotted with hundreds of pools and lakes, is notoriously wet and difficult to cross. Locals say that there are as many lakes as days of the year. O’Donovan’s suggestion merits serious consideration. However, in view of the growing evidence for an early Brittonic language in Ireland, this name is best explained as follows: it is likely that the name An Cheacha (fem. noun) originally referred neither to an individual peak nor to a range, but to a steep, narrow gorge at the upper end of the Baurearagh valley. The word is only known through this place-name and two others near Dunmanway in West Cork: Caha River and the townland of Ardcahan (Ir. Ard Ceachan), but appears to be cognate with Welsh ceg, ‘throat, mouth, orifice’, which incidentally is also a feminine noun. The English word gorge also means ‘throat’. The suspicion that the name applied originally to a topographical feature distinct from the range is confirmed by the fact that the name appears as a simplex (just An Cheacha), not following a generic e.g. sliabh, sléibhte or the like. The name was, no doubt, later transferred to the range, a change probably facilitated by cartographers equating Ir. An Cheacha with Eng. Caha Mountains. The individual peak named Caha (Ir. Cnoc na Ceachan), despite being only a minor bump on the shoulder of Coomnadiha, is so called because of its location right at the head of this gorge. The geography of the Baurearagh valley and the Caha gorge, essential to understanding this name, is now unfamiliar to all but the handful of remaining inhabitants and avid hillwalkers. Always remote, the valley is now hardly ever visited, largely due to the construction in the 19th century of the Tunnels Road from Bonane to Glengarriff, which ascends the ridge SW of Releagh to Turner’s Rock without entering the valley at all. “Out of sight, out of mind”.
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