Lewis's Topographical Dictionary - Waterford City

WATERFORD, a sea-port, city, and county of itself, the seat of a diocese, and the head of a union, locally in the county of WATERFORD, of which it is the capital, and in the pro-vince of MUNSTER, 67 miles (E. by N.) from Cork, and 75¾ (S. S. W.) from Dublin; containing 29,288 inhabitants, of whom 23,216 are in the city and suburbs.

The ancient name of this place is said to have been Cuan us Grioth or Grian, signifying, in the Irish language, "the Haven of the Sun;" it afterwards obtained the appella-tion of Gleann-na-Gieodh, or "the Valley of Lamenta-tion," from a sanguinary conflict between the Irish and the Danes, in which the former, who were victorious, burnt it to the ground. By early writers it was called Menapia, under which name was implied the whole dis-trict; and by the Irish and Welsh, Portiargi, "the Port of the Thigh" (from the supposed similitude which the river at this place assumes to that part of the human body), which appellation it still partly retains. Its more general name Waterford, which is of Danish origin, and supposed to be a corruption of Vader-Fiord, "the Ford of the Father," or of Odin, a Scandinavian deity, was derived from a ford across St. John's river, which here falls into the river Suir.