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Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!
You were looking for evidence of Irish place-names based on meteorological phenomena in order to justify a grammatically correct form of the name <Dun Gaeth> 'Fortress of the Wind(s)'.
Old Irish <gáeth> (which later came to be spelled <gaoth>) actually represent several different words. (The slash represents an acute accent over the preceding vowel.) One, as you know, means 'wind'; another means 'sea, stream, estuary'. Although <gaoth> occurs in a number of place-names, it is in each case the word for a stream or estuary, not the word for wind. (Some of these place-names are <Gaoth Beara> 'Barra's inlet', <Gaoth Dóbhair> 'water inlet', and <Gaoth Luachrois> 'Loughross Bay'.) [1, 2, 4, 5]
We did find a very few English place-names that refer to the wind: Windhill in Yorkshire West Riding and Windle in Lancs. are 'windy hill', and Wingate (Durham) and Wingates (Northumberland) are 'wind-gate', i.e., a pass where the wind drives through. [3] All of these refer to natural topographical features rather than to man-made ones, and in any case we found nothing at all comparable in Irish.
>From this we conclude that while <Dún Gaeith> (up to about the 12th
century) or <Dún Gaoith> (thereafter) would be a reasonable Irish
place-name, it would mean 'fortress of the stream or inlet', not
'fortress of the wind'. (The <i> is inserted in each case to put the
noun into the genitive case, which is required by the grammar in this
construction.)
Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn and Arval Benicoeur also contributed to this letter. We hope that it has been of use and that you will write us if you have any further questions.
For the Academy,
Talan Gwynek
[1] _Dictionary of the Irish Language_ Compact edition (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1990).
[2] Dinneen, Patrick S. _Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla_ (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1979 [1927]).
[3] Ekwall, Eilert, _The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_ (Oxford: At the University Press, 1989).
[4] Hogan, Edmund. _Onomasticon Goedelicum: Locorum et Tribuum Hiberniae et Scotia_ (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1993 [1910]).
[5] Room, Adrian, _Dictionary of Irish Place-Names_ (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1994).