Ratoath

Ratoath () is a commuter town in County Meath, Ireland. A branch of the Broad Meadow Water (Broadmeadow River) () flows through the town. The R125 and R155 roads meet in the village. At the 2022 census, there were 10,007 people living in Ratoath, making it the fourth largest urban area in Meath. The town is around northwest of Dublin city centre.

==Name== Ratoath gives its name to a village, a townland, a parish, a civil parish, an electoral division and to the barony of Ratoath. The derivation or meaning of the word is uncertain. Two alternative Irish forms are cited: Ráth-Tógh and Ráth-Tábhachta. These place names occur in Irish manuscripts and scholars say that the writers were referring to Ratoath; it seems that they were trying to give a phonetic rendering of a name that was unfamiliar to them. Mruigtuaithe occurs in the Book of Armagh as the name of one of these places in Meath where Saint Patrick founded a church and Eoin MacNeill identifies it as Ratoath. If this is correct it would seem that the second portion of the word comes from the Irish word tuath which means a territory belonging to a family or sept. Mruig means a grazing plain. Ráth is the Irish for a ringfort.