According to Fingal Co. Co. planning guidelines, Councils can advise residents and developers of requirements for naming and numbering housing estates and approve the final proposals. The naming of mixed residential and mixed-use schemes should reflect local history, folklore and/or place names in accordance with Objectives of the Fingal Development Plan 2017-2023. Names can refer to historical buildings or structures, archaeological monuments or features, the local landscape, or an association with a significant local historical individual, custom or event. Local historical societies or Fingal Libraries may be able to offer advice. In particular, the use and promotion of historical and current townland and parish names in the urban and rural environment should be promoted. Here are the origins of some of Malahide’s residential estates.

The Bawn - stems from an Irish word to describe a protective enclosure for cattle often associated with a castle.- Gaybrook - built adjacent to the Gaybrook Stream formed by the confluence of steams flowing down from Feltrim and Drynam.- Killeen - after John Killeen, the railway engineer, who built Killeen Terrace opposite St. Sylvester’s Church as a potential dowry for his daughter. Milford - many hundreds of years ago where the nearby Gaybrook Stream enters the Broadmeadows Estuary there stood a ford and a cornmill worked by the ebb and flow of the tide. Later in 1782 a cotton mill was erected nearby. - Muldowney - a corruption of Maoil Domhnainn, an ancient name for a topographical feature in that part of the inlet, in turn named after an ancient people the Fir Domhnainn. -Texas Lane – believed to be named for a cobbler who once lived in the area who had a habit of holding a supply of tacks in his mouth as he used them to mend boots and so was nicknamed ‘Tacks’. It followed that the lane where he lived was known as Tacks’s Lane which eventually became Texas Lane. - Yellow Walls - the name predates the cotton industry established in this area in 1782 but is probably derived from earlier times when linen was woven from flax fibres and hung on local walls to bleach, staining the stone in the process.