An irate Irish propery developer has renamed his development "Pogue Mahone Court" — meaning 'Kiss my Ass Court" in Gaelic — after residents objected to a plan to demolish an Edwardian-era house on the site.

Kevin and Susan O'Gorman have denied they are getting back at residents by renaming the  development, which is in Cheltenham in England and where local residents had no idea what the new name meant.

The Gormans claim the name is the same as the ancestral village in Ireland they come from. However, there is no such name listed anywhere in Irish towns and villages.

The Pogues, the singing group led by Shane MacGowan, were the first to use Pogue Mahones as their name. Resident Caroline Donnelly told the local newspaper the Gloucestershire Echo: "We found out what it meant when my husband and I were on the Internet trying to find this village. We were shocked. We've managed to conduct our campaign in an adult way. But this is just completely rude."

Nigel McLoughlin, a linguistic expert at University of Gloucestershire, confirmed the naughty name .

"Pogue Muhone is a phonetic rendering of the Irish Gaelic phrase Pog mo thoin, which breaks down as Pog - imperative form of the Irish verb 'to kiss'," he told the Echo. "Mo, a possessive pronoun in the first person singular, and thoin is a mutated form of the noun 'toin' meaning 'a***'."