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Well,
I haven't got many place-name sites as such to direct you
to, but I can start by providing a link to the English
Place-Name Society. The Centre
for English Name-Studies (home of VEPN) has a site
too, with samples of current work (at present you can view draft
articles on 'Charlton' names and OE cyning 'king' in place-names).
It's also worthwhile visiting the relatively young Scottish
Place-Name Society - their impressively full site offers
some interesting articles, news and links. Haven't found anything
for Wales at all. Haven't exactly looked though. The Society
for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland has a website which
is worth a look, especially for information on forthcoming conferences.
It's
a very good idea to get hold of David Mills' Dictionary of English
Place-Names (2nd ed. 1998), plenty of sound scholarship for
your 8 or 9 pounds, but if you're ever stuck without a copy then
pop to the xrefer
site, select the topic 'place names' and chance your arm. Some diacritics
have got lost (vowel-length macrons at least), but other than that
the entries seem to be intact.
Tha
Engliscan Gesithas (The English Companions) have a neatly
arranged Anglo-Saxon bibliography on their site (here's a
direct
link - chapter 8 is 'Onomastics'). It's useful but rather
patchy; for example the Kent section lists Judith Glover's work
of amateur plagiarism but doesn't mention the two pioneering works
by Wallenberg from which she filched. (I said filched).
Here's
some handy stuff on
Roman place-names in Britain (but do check Rivet & Smith
too), and here's a smart Roman
map of Britain site (prepare to be daunted!).
There
are endless local history and genealogical sites offering potted
lists of local place-name derivations, almost always simply lifted
from Ekwall or Mills or (occasionally) EPNS volumes. It's hard to
find one that says anything new, but a few (like this treatment
of Lake
District place-names complete with glossary) are well presented
and generally sensible.
If
only there were more scholarly articles online. I discovered Gillian
Fellows-Jensen's paper on the OScand. elements dalr
and holmr (albeit with the references chopped off), but
not much else, apart from one or two very very old snippets in
Notes
& Queries - gems like the Rev. Walter Skeat explaining
'Margate' back in 1867. Shout if you find anything good! I thought
I could put some notes of my own up, but the only thing I've got
to hand at the moment is a brief attempt at clarifying -ing(as)
and -ing(a)- names. Very poor. [See Appendix
1, for what it's worth]. Oh, hang about, I've got my notes
on Wickham Barn as well [see Appendix 2].
David
Simpson's ambitiously wide-ranging 'North
East History' site includes onomastic material: Northumberland,
Durham, Yorkshire, Cumberland and Lancashire all appear, with varying
levels of coverage (here's a more direct link to the place-names
& surnames section). Simpson makes use of EPNS volumes,
Mawer, Ekwall and Gelling, plus some generally uninspired guesswork.
The interactive place-name maps are rather fun (wobble your cursor
back and forth over the rim of each area map - ooh!), but don't
put too much trust in all the etymologies given. Not bad though.
For a valuable collection of Northumberland place-names visit the
site of Kevin
Futers, a former student in this very department who has
kindly put a chunk of his studies online. Have a read of his short
and sensible introduction, then scroll down and click on 'Place-names
of Northumberland' - you'll find a neatly categorized 'switchboard'
of name-types to choose from. You might have to be a bit patient
while some of the larger tables load - they do appear eventually.
All good stuff.
I've just stumbled upon a site with loads and loads of Anglo-Saxon
personal-names arranged both according to structure (monothematic
or dithematic) and gender. It looks handy but I haven't examined
it properly yet. I don't think it's rigorously scholarly, but it
will serve to impart the flavour of OE given-names.
If
you want to follow up any references to Anglo-Saxon charters
(it's worthwhile - you never know what you might discover) then
this
is the place. Amongst numerous other useful links, it leads
to such delights as:
The
Electronic Sawyer - deriving from Peter Sawyer's "Anglo-Saxon
Charters" (1968), this up-to-date annotated catalogue/bibliography
is an extremely valuable resource which can be used easily in conjunction
with
The
Regesta Regum Anglorum - the full texts of a huge number
of charters, arranged chronologically, i.e. more or less by Sawyer
Number (NB, if you don't know the 'S' number of a given charter,
for instance if you're working from Ekwall or an early EPNS volume
which only cites BCS or KCD, then there's even a Sawyer Number Calculator
into which you type the BCS or KCD number - icing on the cake, eh?)
There
are any number of other sources of place-name data which you may
fancy using or checking online, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(here
is an edition of the 'A' text). Modern renditions should
be easy to find (for instance here
is a translation of the A-S Chronicle, along with much much
more, including Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History' and such Celtic
sources as the 'Historia Brittonum', 'Annals Cambriae' and Gildas).
Happy searching!
Time
to mention maps. Hmmm. There are so many sites offering maps
that I can't begin to provide much of guide, but in general you
should probably avoid things which are simply road atlases or route-maps
as the emphasis on travel information tends to swamp everything
else. A couple of suggestions, using examples from that seminar
on maps which you all enjoyed so much (the one with the colouring-in
pens):
Multimap
is certainly worth visiting. For example, try entering 'Longborough'
in the "Find" box, then switch to either the 50,000 or
25,000 scale using the zoom feature and move about with the direction
arrows. Good eh? Sadly there's no sign of the long barrow, but the
contour lines are clear as day. When you get bored, click on the
blue "Map" tab above to go somewhere else - try 'Beal' for instance
and you'll get a choice of two Beals (plotted on a map too - now
there's a handy tool in itself!). Pick the one in Northumberland,
zoom in to 25,000 and pan south a couple of times and there's our
beautiful hill. Can you hear the bees? There's a "printer friendly"
button on the menu which sounds promising but I haven't tried it
yet, sorry. Aaah, yes, there you go, it takes away all the advertising.
A similar site which is probably equally useful is Streetmap,
and I'm sure you'll find there are others.
Old
maps is a new version of an old site which is still under
construction and has a long long way to go. The zoom feature seldom
works (so the maps are unreadably small), the area of coverage per
frame is far from generous, the site navigation is crap, and the
site is often down, so let me heartily recommend its far superior
predecessor Old
Maps (old site) while it's still intemittently available
(mostly it's there but it does disappear, especially at weekends,
and I dread the day it goes for good - please send them begging
emails!). Anyway, this marvellous Old
Maps (old site) presents the first edition 1:10,560 scale
Ordnance Survey maps (the County Series dated between 1846 and 1899;
note that for each map an individual date is given at the foot of
the page). The scanning quality varies from sheet to sheet, but
overall it's adequate. Fancy a go? Let's try Beal again. Starting
on the 'Counties Gazetteer' page, click 'N' (or scroll down to 'N')
and click 'Northumberland', then click 'B', then click 'Beal' (which
conveniently opens a new window). Use the scroll bars to move around
the map (or use your arrow-keys once you've clicked in the map frame
itself), and you should find our 'bee-hill'. Get used to moving
around adjacent maps using the North South East West arrows at the
top. If you want to print, make sure you're in the map frame (it's
easy to forget to click in the frame after using those NSEW buttons).
It's worth experimenting with both landscape and portrait options
on your print settings. When you're bored of Beal, close the window
and click on the link back to 'Counties Gazetteer'. For more practice,
how about trying 'Gloucestershire' > 'L' > 'Longborough' (you'll
find our long barrow marked simply 'Tumulus'); or better practice
might be trying 'Dorset' > 'C' > 'Chideock'; because the gazetteer
link doesn't always take you to the exact map section you're after,
you'll have to use the 'W' arrow to move west then scroll to the
right to find our old friend Langdon Hill.
Get
Mapping is well worth visiting to see some aerial photography,
but make sure you have a map next to you if you want to make good
use of this site, otherwise you'll get hopelessly lost. Type in
a place-name (try Horse Eye for example) - it finds most names in
its huge gazetteer. Click on one of the addresses when prompted
(there's only one Horse Eye, it seems), then use the 'roam' arrows
to move about the image, or click on the image itself near the edges.
It's all very pretty and impressive, but as far as I can fathom
it's more or less unprintable because each image is craftily made
up of 9 separate chunks. You could save and print each chunk and
then pritt-stick 'em together, or you could go to the pub. A few
other warnings:
(1) be prepared to just choose one of a list of specific addresses
(e.g. try finding 'Longborough' - all you can do is click one at
random);
(2) you'll sometimes need to be quite specific in your search (e.g.
'Beal' is no good, you'll need to ask for 'Beal, Northumberland',
and then you'll discover that the area of coverage, though extensive,
is as yet incomplete...);
(3) the thing sometimes wants an annoyingly precise address (e.g.
'Stratford Upon Avon' won't work, so using your trusty map try e.g.
"Bridge Town, Stratford Upon Avon" then navigate!).
The results of all this fiddly searching can be rewarding - for
instance, you can see there's 'something fortified' going on at
Wolstonbury
in Pyecombe (Sussex), NGR TQ 2813. I've found this a very handy
tool for plotting visible features on Anglo-Saxon boundary perambulations
[see Appendix 3 for
an example]. But inevitably not everything you might hope will show
up does; e.g. try 'Longborough' - there's no sign of the long barrow
at all, but I know it's still there cos I've walked on it! (gently
of course).
Right,
that's my lot, nearly. No need to fret if the above links don't
help one little bit with your chosen topic. In fact, many of the
resources provided by these links are more or less peripheral to
the subject, and when it comes to tackling the place-names themselves
(their component parts and etymologies, a range of early forms,
scholarly discussion and analysis, etc.) you can't beat the standard
apparatus in book-form. There is nothing online which can compete
with Gelling's or Fellows-Jensen's outstanding studies, with Cameron's
general survey, with the EPNS county volumes, with Smith's Elements
and Parsons & Styles' VEPN, with Spittal & Field's
Reader's Guide, with Ekwall's and Mills's dictionaries, or
with a crisp OS map in your grubby mitts. Go on, off to the library
with you...
PS
- there's light in the dimness, albeit still afar:
The DAPNE project (Digital Archive of the Place-Names of
England) is now underway, with the aim of digitising the collection
and volumes of the EPNS. The resulting
database will be a major new research tool, but it's early days
yet. Meanwhile we can but gaze in envy at the University of Oslo's
digitised version of Oluf Rygh's 18 volume collection Norske
Gaardnavne (Norwegian farm-names) - see the 'Place names'
section (there are many other useful Norse resources here too, if
your Norwegian's up to it).
PPS - before you go, write something witty in the guestbook to make
it look like I've got friends. Any old filth will do. Ta.
PPPS - just thought, it might help if I give you a couple of pointers
to things in the Robinson Library too. If you haven't found the
place-names section yet then shame on you, can't remember the exact
number but it's around 422, and there's personal-name books there
as well, so get there quick before there's only 'The place-names
of Buckinghamshire' left - oops, too late. But, even though the
cupboard looks bare, one of the debatable delights of the Robinson
is that they're really shit at classifying things, so there's stuff
lurking all over the shop. You'll find more books on surnames classified
under heraldry & genealogy (about 929.4), and the odd place-names
book amongst historical geography or whatever this catch-all is
meant to be at 914-ish (NB the Domesday geographies live here as
well). And under semantics at 412 as well. Oh, and under bibliography
at 016. And just to pervert the joys of browsing, some bright spark's
dumped a load of decent stuff in Store and left poo on the shelves,
very handy, so you'll have to search on the catalogue for things
to summon (they appear by noon the following day). Don't forget
to check journals in the Periodicals sections (mostly PER 800 but
elsewhere too) - as well as the indispensable JEPNS and Nomina (still
partly in Store?!) there are place-name articles dotted about in
all sorts (try Anglia, JEGP, English Studies, Leeds Studies, Arkiv...,
Notes & Queries, etc. etc.). And there's loads of OS maps upstairs.
If you can't find a copy of one of the standards (Ekwall, Mills
or Gelling for example), and it's all gone a bit fraught and scissors-in-the-neck
in Student Texts, try the local libraries dotted around the place.
Arrrr, when I were a lad I remember grabbing 'Signposts to the past'
off a trembling biddy in Heaton Library. Oh, and there's always
a copy of Ekwall to consult in the English Dept Library. If you've
been good all year you could ask the Easter Bunny for your very
own Mills. Bored now. Here's a limerick.
And, um, here's another limerick.
Night night.
APPENDIX
1 : brief notes on OE -ing(as)
and -ing(a)- by me
APPENDIX
2 : notes on Wickham Barn in Sussex
APPENDIX
3 : an illustrated perambulation
of the Anglo-Saxon bounds of South Heighton in Sussex
I
don't like it down here, I want my mum
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