CLOG (Univ. of Glasgow)

Drummond, Peter

English

Balgray and Balgreen

Scott, Margaret

Words, Names and Culture: place-names and the Scots language

Clancy, Thomas

Two Ayrshire Place-names

Rixson, Denis

The Shadow of \u27Onomastic Graffiti\u27

Editor, The

Notes on Contributors

Márkus, Gilbert

R!"#!$%
Patrick McKay, A Dictionary of Ulster Place-Names, second edition, 
Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast, 2007. 160 pp. £10.50. ISBN 0-85389-
896-2
The first edition of this work appeared in 1999 and was warmly welcomed 
by place-name scholars – in Ireland at least, though I get the impression 
from informal enquiries that it was less well-known in Scotland than it 
deserved to be. Covering place-names from the nine counties of Ulster, 
this second edition incorporates changes, a number of which the author 
says were prompted by ‘scholarly reviews or feedback from members of 
the public’. The book itself is both scholarly and accessible to the general 
reader, a distillation into a pocket-sized paperback in an accessible format 
of a vast collection of data and careful analysis undertaken since 1987 by 
the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project at Queens University, Belfast 
(though since this project is generally restricted to the six counties of 
Northern Ireland, the fact that the present volume deals with all nine 
counties of Ulster indicates that its material is distilled from other research 
activities too). The output of this project over the intervening years has 
included the publication of eight volumes of The Place-Names of Northern 
Ireland, containing detailed records and discussions of various areas. The 
research has also resulted in a large body of data going on-line in a most 
useful website:& <http://www.placenamesni.org/>. Sadly, although the 
project at Queens was designed to produce 30 or 40 volumes of The 
Place-Names of Northern Ireland, the process has now come to a standstill, 
at least for the present, as Queens University Belfast has closed down the 
Northern Ireland Place-Names Project, making the staff redundant. 
McKay’s small volume discusses names of a wide range of types – 
counties, towns, townlands, water-courses, mountains, hills and glens. 
Clearly no single volume could even list – let alone analyse and discuss 
– all the recorded names of the nine counties. The author has had to 
limit his scope and has chosen some clear and objective guidelines for 
inclusion: the Gasaitéar na hÉireann /Gazetteer of Ireland (Dublin, 1989) 
and some names which are not included in the Gazetteer but do appear 
on the Ordnance Survey map of the area. Other names were included 
according to more subjective (but perfectly respectable) criteria: ‘they 
were deemed to be of some interest or significance’.
!e Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 2011, 175–78
176 Gilbert Márkus
The volume lists all place-names in simple alphabetical order (rather 
than arranging them, for example, under counties, or under parishes). A 
great advantage of this method is that one can easily find any place-name 
in the book without having to know in advance what parish or county it 
is in, doing away with the need for an alphabetical index of names and 
thereby saving a few pages at the end of the book. A slight disadvantage 
of this arrangement is that, where an arrangement on a parish-by-parish 
basis, for example, would draw together in one section all the place-names 
of a fundamental social unit and would provide the toponymic basis for 
a good local history, this is not possible in the format which has actually 
been chosen. 
Each entry follows a certain format, as in the following example:
Moneymore  tl. vill., Derry 2838
8 km NE of Cookstown
par: Artrea/Desertlyne bar: Loughinsholin
Ir. Muine Mór [mwinya more] ‘large thicket or hill’ [Minimore 1654]
This represents the following information: a standard modern Anglicised 
spelling of the head-name, given in bold, the indication of what the name 
refers to (here a townland and a village), what county it is in (Derry) and 
its grid-reference. Sometimes a variant modern spelling of the head-name 
is offered in the following line, if another convention is still current.
The following line gives the distance and direction of the head-name’s 
location from the nearest substantial settlement. Though there is a slightly 
subjective element in the decision whether to describe a place as a ‘village’ 
or a ‘hamlet’, or what counts as a ‘substantial settlement’, this kind of 
descriptive spatial and territorial data is indispensible.
The following line tells us the parish and barony (or parishes and 
baronies) in which the referent is located. And the final section – varying 
in length from two to twenty or more lines – discusses the meaning of the 
name, gives an orthographically correct Gaelic form (where applicable) 
and gives information about its tenurial history, local topography, 
ecclesiastical history, saint’s cult, early medieval legends, alternative or 
earlier names, associations with other places, or anything else that strikes 
the author as illuminating. It makes for an informative, entertaining 
and accessible read, while giving the impression of scholarly rigour and 
thoroughness: learning worn lightly. Thus, under Hillhall, a townland and 
Reviews 177
village in Co. Down, we are told that the name refers to ‘a former house 
and defensive bawn which appears to have been built c. 1637 by Peter 
Hill’, and that the townland was ‘fomerly known as Kilmuck ... which 
is possibly a corruption of Cloncolmoc (Ir. Cluain Cholmóg) the name 
of a church recorded in 1306, though there is no record of ecclesiastical 
remains and the identification must be regarded as tentative’ (p. 81). A 
slight regret must be voiced here that a reader who knows the reference 
to Cloncolmoc in 1306 and seeks to find a reference to it in this book will 
not be able to do so easily: there is no index of the place-names discussed, 
and Cloncolmoc / Cluain Cholmóg does not have its own entry. It is only 
discussed under Hillhall.
Under each head-name only one early form is usually offered 
(presumably one which clearly illustrates the interpretation of the name 
offered by the author), and no reference is generally given to the source in 
which that early form appears. This reader found this rather frustrating: 
there are bound to be many place-names whose early forms are highly 
varied, offering more than one potential interpretation; and the lack 
of a reference to the context in which the early form appears makes it 
impossible to check that source, or to consider the significance of that 
early form in the context in which it occurs. But the aim to produce a small 
easily handled dictionary, aimed at a general readership, and presumably 
one which readers can carry with them on the bus or a bicycle, means that 
such luxuries are excluded. For readers who want more than this, they will 
have to go to the relevant volume of The Place-Names of Northern Ireland 
to pursue their enquiries (in the hope that the name they are looking for 
has been dealt with in one of the eight volumes so far published). There 
much fuller information of this sort is given. And it must be acknowledged 
that in some cases, where there is ambiguity or confusion about the name 
and its history, a brief discussion of forms and variant readings is offered, 
even in this little paperback. Thus under Lough Derg, for example (p. 98), 
an analysis of the modern form is offered (‘red lake’), but it is followed by 
a discussion of alternative possibilities involving OIr gerg ‘grouse, quail’ 
and the personal name Gerg as found in the Ulster Cycle as the name of a 
king slain by Conchobhur mac Nessa on the loch – a dindsenchas on the 
name as it occurs in the ninth century as Locha Geirg.
A degree of frustration also arises from the way in which pronunciation 
is indicated. The vagaries of English spelling (as indicated by George 
Bernard Shaw’s famous observation that ghoti was an acceptable way 
178 Gilbert Márkus
of spelling ‘fish’) are such that, even with a very short guide given on 
p. xii, the pronunciations indicated in the text are sometimes ambiguous. 
On p. 111, Droichead Uí Dhálaigh is said to by pronounced [dryhid ee 
³aalee], but it is not at all clear from this whether the stressed long vowel, 
represented as [aa], should be read as [D Û] or as [o Û]. A brief introduction 
to IPA and the use of this to indicate pronunciation, even in the broadest 
possible way, would be a clearer guide – and there is no harm in helping 
members of the reading public to acquaint themselves with the basic 
outlines of IPA.
The book would be a most useful addition to the shelf of any Scottish 
toponymist – not least because of the very useful index of place-name 
elements which includes all the elements cited in explanation of place-
names, referring the reader to each place where those elements occur. 
It contains several Gaelic words which are not commonly referred to in 
Scotland in our discussion of our own place-names and Scottish readers 
might find some revealing surprises here – perhaps references to Gaelic 
words or usages still current in Ireland but obsolete or unrecorded in 
Scottish Gaelic.
It would be very good to see books like this being made available 
in Scotland. Over the past couple of decades a good deal of progress 
has been made in the interpretation of our toponymy and much has 
been published in books and learned journals (like this one) to advance 
scholarly understanding. McKay’s book provides a model for future 
publication in Scotland, making the best of scholarship available to a 
general audience. McKay’s success in doing this only serves to sharpen 
the regret one feels that the principal forum in which this scholarship was 
developed in Northern Ireland has been brought to a premature close.
G#'(!)* M+),-%, University of Glasgow
Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, From the Viking Word-Hoard: A Dictionary 
of Scandinavian Words in the Languages of Britain & Ireland, Four 
Courts Press: Dublin, 2010. 342 pp. .50 hardback. ISBN 978-1-
84682-173-8
Mention the word ‘Viking’ in polite conversation and the chances are that 
thoughts will turn to murder, mayhem and the looting of monasteries – none 
!e Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 2011, 178–82


Patrick McKay: A Dictionary of Ulster Place-Names

Prelim

Crook, Alice

Personal Names in 18th-Century Scotland: a case study of the parish of Beith (North Ayrshire)

Taylor, Simon

The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 6, 2012, 97–99
Bibliography of Scottish Name Studies for 2011
Simon Taylor
University of Glasgow
This is the third such bibliography in The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 
(JSNS), the first appearing in JSNS 4 (2010) covering the years 2006–2009, 
the second in JSNS 5 (2011) covering the year 2010. It aims to present, in a 
continuous list arranged alphabetically by author, all relevant articles, chapters 
in edited books, monographs, CDs, e-books and PhDs (some of which are 
now available on-line) which appeared in 2011. It draws heavily on the 
bibliographies which I compile for Scottish Place-Name News, the twice-yearly 
Newsletter of the Scottish Place-Name Society. It is therefore somewhat biased 
towards place-names rather than personal names. However, the much higher 
proportion of place-name related material is also a reflection of the relative state 
of each of these disciplines in Scotland.
For more extensive bibliographies of name studies in Britain and Ireland, 
and, less comprehensively, other parts of northern Europe, see the bibliographic 
sections in the relevant issues of Nomina, the journal of the Society for Name 
Studies in Britain and Ireland, compiled by Carole Hough. The latest available 
is her ‘Bibliography for 2009’ (Nomina 33 (2010), 193–208). The material 
in these Nomina bibliographies is set out thematically and includes relevant 
reviews which have appeared in the given year.
Also included in this bibliography are articles from the latest Nomina 33 
(2010), not published until 2012.
An extensive, though by no means exhaustive, bibliography of Scottish 
toponymics, set out thematically, and regionally, can be found on-line at 
<http://www.spns.org.uk/bibliography09.html#advanced>. 
I would be very pleased to hear from anyone who spots any omissions or 
errors in the following bibliography. I can be contacted via the JSNS website, 
or by post c/o Clann Tuirc. Also, I would be glad to receive notice of anything 
published in 2012 for inclusion in JSNS 7.
In order to make it easier for the reader to find their way around, I have put 
in bold not only authors’ surnames but also some of the key places, persons, 
elements or topics discussed in the individual entries.
Bölcskei, Andrea, 2010, ‘Distinctive Additions in English Settlement Names: 
A Cognitive Linguistic Approach’, Nomina 33 (2010), 101–20 [published 
2012] [relevant also to Scotland].
Breeze, Andrew, 2011, ‘Durham, Caithness, and Armes Prydein’, Northern 
Simon Taylor98
The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 6, 2012, 97–99
History XLVIII: 1, 147–52.
Breeze, Andrew, 2011, ‘Strone “rivulet” in OED’, Notes and Queries vol. 256 
[New Series vol. 58], no. 1 (March), 56 [on Hiberno-English strone ‘rivulet’].
Briggs, Keith, 2010, ‘Maidenburgh, Geoffrey of Wells and Rabanus Maurus’, 
Nomina 33 (2010), 121–38 [published 2012].
Coates, Richard, 2010, ‘Hidden Gates’, Nomina 33 (2010), 139–68 [published 
2012].
Cox, Richard, 2010, ‘Issues in developing a chronology for Norse and Gaelic 
place-names in the Hebrides’, Nomina 33 (2010), 129–38 [published 
2012].
Curtis, Liz, 2011, ‘Tarbat or Not Tarbat? Was there a Portage on the Tarbat 
Peninsula?’, The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 1–34.
Dixon, Norman, 1947, ‘Place-Names of Midlothian’, unpublished PhD thesis, 
University of Edinburgh. Published 2009 in digital form with introductory 
notes by S. Taylor <http://www.spns.org.uk>; published 2011 in hard copy 
by the Scottish Place-Name Society.
Gilbert, John M., 2011, ‘Place-names and Managed Woods in Medieval 
Scotland’, The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 35–56.
Grant, Alison, 2011, ‘Gaelic Place-names: Gall ’, in The Bottle Imp, Issue 
10, <http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/SWE/TBI/TBIIssue10/Gall.
html> [published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS)].
Hough, Carole, 2010, ‘The name-type Maid(en)well’, Nomina 33 (2010), 
27–44 [published 2012].
Hough, Carole, 2010, ‘Bibliography for 2009’, Nomina 33 (2010), 193–208 
[published 2012].
James, Alan G., 2010, ‘A Slippery Customer: proto-Indo-European *(s)lei- 
and its progeny in some place-names in Britain’, Nomina 33 (2010), 65–85 
[published 2012].
James, Alan G., 2011, ‘Dating Brittonic Place-names in Southern Scotland 
and Cumbria’, The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 57–114.
James, Alan G., 2011, ‘A Note on the Two Barloccos KCB, with Arlecdon 
CMB’, The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 169–74.
King, Jacob, and Cotter, Michelle, 2011, ‘Gaelic in the Landscape: Place-
names in Islay and Jura/A’ Ghàidhlig air Aghaidh na Tìre (Scottish Natural 
Heritage/Dualchas Nàdair na h-Alba and Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba/Gaelic 
Place-Names of Scotland).
Kruse, Arne, 2011, ‘Fair Isle’, Northern Studies 42, 17–40 [detailed discussion 
of the origin of the name].
Livingston, Alistair, 2011, ‘Gaelic in Galloway: Part One – Expansion’, 
Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian 
Bibliography of Scottish Name Studies for 2011 99
The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 6, 2012, 97–99
Society (Third Series) 85, 85–92.
McNiven, Peter E., 2011, ‘Gaelic Place-names and the Social History of Gaelic 
Speakers in Medieval Menteith’, unpublished PhD, University of Glasgow 
[<http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2685/>].
Muhr, Kay, 2011, ‘Hogan’s Onomasticon and the work of the Northern 
Ireland Place-Name Project’, in Edmund Hogan’s Onomasticon Goedelicum: 
Reconsiderations, edd. Kevin Murray and Pádraig Ó Riain (Irish Texts Society/
Cumann na Scríbheann nGaedhilge, Subsidiary Series 23), 47–80 [including 
discussion of individual elements Martairtheach, Durlas, Drong and Gabhar].
Nicolaisen, W. F. H., 2011, In the Beginning was the Name: Selected Essays 
by Professor W. F. H. Nicolaisen (Scottish Place-Name Society, Edinburgh) 
[for a complete list of those included, see <http://www.spns.org.uk/
IBWNorderform.html>; for a partial index, see <http://www.spns.org.uk>].
Parsons, David N., 2011, ‘On the Origin of “Hiberno-Norse Inversion-
compounds”’, The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 115–52.
Rixson, Denis, 2011, ‘Too Many Papar – Not Enough Munkar’, The Journal 
of Scottish Name Studies 5, 153–68.
Sharpe, Richard, 2011, ‘Peoples and languages in eleventh- and twelfth-century 
Britain and Ireland: reading the charter evidence’, in The Reality behind 
Charter Diplomatic in Anglo-Norman Britain: Studies by Dauvit Broun, John 
Reuben Davies, Richard Sharpe and Alice Taylor, ed. Dauvit Broun (Glasgow) 
1–119 [original e-publication 2010 (revised 2011) on <http://www.poms.
ac.uk/ebook/index.html>].
Taylor, Simon, 2011, ‘Pictish place-names revisited’, in Pictish Progress: 
New Studies on Northern Britain in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Stephen T. 
Driscoll, Jane Geddes and Mark A. Hall (Leiden and Boston [Brill]), 67–118 
[published November 2010].
Taylor, Simon, 2011, ‘Placename Studies in Scotland and the Onomasticon’, 
in Edmund Hogan’s Onomasticon Goedelicum: Reconsiderations, edd. Kevin 
Murray and Pádraig Ó Riain (Irish Texts Society/Cumann na Scríbheann 
nGaedhilge, Subsidiary Series 23), 103–16.
Taylor, Simon, 2011, ‘Bibliography of Scottish Name Studies for 2010’, The 
Journal of Scottish Name Studies 5, 183–8.
Tyas, Shaun, 2010, ‘Medievalism in British and Irish Business Names’, Nomina 
33 (2010), 5–26 [published 2012].
Winchester, Angus J. L., 2011, ‘Seasonal settlement in northern England: 
shieling place-names revisited’, in Life in Medieval Landscapes: people and 
places in the middle ages, ed. S. Turner and R. Silvester (Oxford: Windgather 
Press), 125–49 [also covers southern Scotland].


Bibliography of Scottish Name Studies for 2011

!e Journal of Scottish Name Studies 6, 2012, 100–01
N!"#$ !% C!%"&'()"!&$
Alice Crook is currently working towards a PhD at the University of 
Glasgow. Her recently-completed MPhil was a comparative study of the 
personal naming patterns in four Scottish parishes in the 18th century; in her 
PhD, she analyses the personal names used in Early Modern Scotland and 
examines social in*uences on naming practices. Her other interests include 
digital onomastic resources and she is co-founder of the website <onomastics.
co.uk>.
!omas Owen Clancy is Professor of Celtic at the University of Glasgow.
Matthew H. Hammond is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow 
and was formerly Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh. 
He is a co-creator of the ‘People of Medieval Scotland 1093–1314’ database 
(<www.poms.ac.uk>) and will begin a new Leverhulme-funded project in 
May 2013 entitled ‘+e transformation of Gaelic Scotland in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries’. A graduate of the University of Texas and the University 
of Glasgow, Matthew is interested in all aspects of Scottish history in the 
middle ages, including personal names, surnames and prosopography.
Gilbert Márkus is a researcher in the Department of Celtic and Gaelic in 
the University of Glasgow.  He has researched and published in the area 
of medieval Scottish history, with a focus on onomastics, literature, and 
religious belief and practice. Having recently published !e Place-Names of 
Bute (Donington 2012), he is currently engaged on a a three-year research 
project funded by the Leverhulme Trust: Commemorations of Saints in Scottish 
Place-Names.
Michael Parker graduated in history and archaeology but his interest in 
place-names began in his childhood in Yorkshire. He lived in Scotland for 
two years in the 1980s and for 13 till 2010, when he moved to Su,olk. He 
has published several articles on early medieval topics. His main study areas 
are Yorkshire and the Scottish border counties, but this is his -rst Scottish 
study to be published. He has work in progress on the place-names in the 
eighth-century chronicle preserved in Symeon of Durham’s Historia Regum. 
He is a member of the English and Scottish Place-Name Societies and the 
Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland.
!e Journal of Scottish Name Studies 6, 2012, 100–01
Dr Simon Taylor has been working in various aspects of Scottish place-name 
studies since the early 1990s. He is at present employed at the University of 
Glasgow on two half-time contracts: one is as a researcher on the AHRC-
funded ‘Scottish Toponymy in Transition: Progressing County-Surveys of the 
Place-Names of Scotland’, the chief output of which are place-name volumes 
on (pre-1975) Clackmannanshire, Kinross-shire and Menteith; the other is 
as a research and teaching associate in Scottish onomastics in the School of 
Humanities (Celtic and Gaelic) and the School of Critical Studies (English 
Language). Editor of JSNS since its inception in 2007, he is now co-editor 
with Richard Cox.
Notes on Contributors


Not a member yet

Balgray and Balgreen

Words, Names and Culture: place-names and the Scots language

Two Ayrshire Place-names

The Shadow of \u27Onomastic Graffiti\u27

Notes on Contributors

Patrick McKay: A Dictionary of Ulster Place-Names

Prelim

Personal Names in 18th-Century Scotland: a case study of the parish of Beith (North Ayrshire)

Bibliography of Scottish Name Studies for 2011

Notes on Contributors

209

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