CLOG (Univ. of Glasgow)

Morgan, Peter

Morgan, Peadar

REVIEWS
Stan Beckensall, Place Names and Field Names of Northumberland, Stroud: 
Tempus, 2006. 160 pp. £17.99. ISBN 978-0-7524-3647-0
The launch of Scotland’s own onomastics journal reflects the need and 
desire for a national perspective on the history, development and politics 
of names as they impact on our geography. A negative justification might 
be that we have for too long represented a vacant space in the jigsaw of 
national studies around us.
But we must remember to look beyond our present concept of Scotland 
and to draw on the comparative onomasticons of the wider historical 
cultural spheres that overlap here more than in most nations. Nowhere is 
this more true than over our only land border, into the northern counties 
of England. Peoples, languages and administrations have flowed back and 
forth until relatively recently, both east and west of the upland spine of this 
narrow neck of land, and, as a guide to earlier onomastic developments, the 
modern border is only an approximate tool.
So the publishing of a book on Northumberland place and field names 
should be seen as being of significance to the study of Scottish toponymic 
patterns and as a useful comparative tool, even if based on two existing 
works by the same author (Northumberland Place Names, 1975, with two 
later editions, and Northumberland Field Names, 1977). England has 
benefited greatly from the multi-volume county studies of the English 
Place-Name Society (EPNS) which have been steadily building up an in-
depth picture of the toponomy of that country. In 1950 it reached the 
former Cumberland, with two volumes of place and field names, and a 
further volume of discussion in 1952. But Northumberland still awaits 
such attention.
Not that it has failed to benefit from any academic attention (Sir Allen 
Mawer, The Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham, Cambridge 
University Press 1920), or suffer from more recent popular treatment 
(Godfrey Watson, Northumberland Place Names: Goodwife Hot & others, 
Morpeth: Sandhill 1970, reprinted 1986, 1995). Stan Beckensall – a well-
kent name in Northumbrian archaeological circles and internationally for 
his work on rock art – brought together the fruits of Mawer and Eilert 
Ekwall’s English-wide studies (culminating in the 1977 fourth edition of 
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Place Names) and published them in an 
accessible and cheap booklet format. But the place-name section of the 
present work still relies heavily on these older studies, usefully leavened 
JSNS 1, 2007, 169–74
170
with the 2004 Cambridge Dictionary of English Place Names (CDEPN ) 
edited by Victor Watts (a work not without its criticisms though – see 
Carole Hough’s 2004 review in Nomina 27, 133–42).
The present book serves to update and expand the author’s earlier 
collections, and makes them more widely available. It has not attempted to 
merge them in any way, however, nor to discuss fully the inter-relationship 
or otherwise of field names and other toponyms. The introduction does 
reinforce the points, though, that field names are ‘intensely personalised’ 
(p. 8) and that they often only come to our attention ‘by the accidental 
retention of documents or legal retention in estate and other offices, or at 
farms themselves’ (p. 9). Both estates and farms have informed the field 
groupings collected by the author from various parts of the county.
The introduction also prefaces the general discussion of the historical 
factors which produced the oldest place-names. Beckensall appears to 
suggest that much of the toponomy is written on a clean sheet after the 
arrival of the Normans. ‘After William the Conqueror had devastated the 
North [of England] there was little left to record,’ he says, then immediately 
goes on to state to the contrary that the ‘other notable feature is that all 
the elements are Old English. The Normans stuck approximately to place 
names as they heard them from local people’ (p. 14). Likewise he even 
records pre-English elements in names such as Corbridge from Cor Burn, 
itself from the Latinised settlement name of Coria (pp. 19, 55), and Ross 
Castle, which is compared to Welsh rhos ‘moor’ and ‘Irish’ (i.e. Gaelic) ros 
‘hillock, promontory’ (p. 68) – how Gaelic might be encountered, off the 
route to Lindisfarne, is never explained.
Neither are the terms Old and Middle English explained, and the 
implication is there that names with elements marked as OE date back to 
this period. In this Beckensall follows EPNS. The practice might not be the 
best, as etymological origin does not of itself indicate date of application or 
meaning at this date, but at least the EPNS volumes are aimed at a restricted 
readership who should know better than to assume age and interpretation 
from such categorisation. Ridiculously, Daveyshiel (Davisel 1344) is given 
by Beckensall as OE ‘Davy’s shieling’ (p. 55), in conflict with the ME origin 
given for the element schele ‘shiel, hut, shed’ (p. 27); and the name of the 
Roman fort of Vindolanda is said to be authenticated by the contemporary 
tablets recently retrieved from the site, as Brittonic vindos ‘white’ + landa 
‘lawn, enclosure’ (p. 19), but Vindolanda is also given as an example of ME 
launde ‘glade, pasture, lawn’ (p. 26).
The impression given is that the structure of the place-name section 
has been dictated by the original booklet format, without time spent on 
Peadar Morgan
171
a fundamental reorganisation of the material. It smacks of having been 
cobbled together to meet a publisher’s request rather than an author’s 
reappraisal of his material – and after all, Beckensall has now supplied 
Tempus with no less than five books since 2001.
This earlier work bequeaths us two tables of core detail. First is a list 
of common elements giving meaning(s), examples from local names, and 
occasionally a brief discussion. It is a useful introductory list, but, in 
addition to the problems indicated above, one not always up to date with 
the latest scholarship (e.g. OE wíc (p. 28), more specialised than just a 
dwelling or farm, see Richard Coates, Nomina 22 (1999), 75–116), and 
sometimes parochial in approach. Not only in Northumberland did OE halh 
‘corner’ (the alternative healh, also given, only belongs to Southern English 
dialects) develop as haugh ‘flat, alluvial land’ (p. 25), but in Scotland also. 
Sometimes the table gives only part of the story, as in Old Norse land, but 
forgetting OE land (p. 26), and treating thorp exclusively as OE þrop rather 
than potentially Old Norse þorp (p. 27).
The second table presents all the place (i.e. settlement) names in 
alphabetical order, with first recorded form (dated but without source) and 
a proffered interpretation. Guidance to location in Northumberland, or 
the modern interloper Tyne and Wear, is limited to a cross-reference to the 
62-square grid over a small map, reprinted from the earlier editions. Some 
names, presumably those presenting the greatest trap to the unaware and 
unwary, are given with a non-phonetic but useful pronunciation guide. 
For example, Bellingham (-injm), Cambois (kammus), Cheswick (chizik), 
Ewesley Burn (oozly), Moledon (moezden), Redesdale (ridz-), Snapdaugh 
(snapduf ), Ulgham (uffm).
There is awareness here of some of the other pitfalls of place-names. 
Blanchland ‘white glade’ is recognised as being an early transfer-name from 
Normandy (pp. 46, 51), and Kirkley is not what the modern form implies 
but from Crikelawa 1176, possibly ‘Crick’s mound’ (pp. 47, 63) – this is 
better expressed elsewhere as a ‘burial mound called Crick’ (p. 46), where 
confusion with a personal name is avoided.
However, the latest scholarship is again not always reflected, as in 
Lindisfarne (pp. 46, 63), where the traditional ‘settlers from Lindis (North 
Lincolnshire)’ has been challenged with Early Gaelic ‘domain at  / of (the local 
English place-name) Lindis’ by Richard Coates in Celtic Voices English Places 
(Coates, Breeze and Horovitz, Stamford: Shaun Tyas 2000, 241–59). There 
is also at least one transcription error: Shotley (p. 26) has been correctly 
reinterpreted (after Watts CDEPN  ?) in this edition as OE sceot-leah ‘pasture 
on a steep slope’, as opposed to the interpretation in at least Beckensall’s 
Reviews
172
1992 edition as OE scotta-leah ‘Scots’ clearing’. But the 1242 early form, 
which had been correct as Schotley, is now incorrectly given as Shotley.
Apart from these tables, this section contains the grouping and discussion 
of names in eight categories of elements based on the referent, and one 
for those of French origin. Only meanings without discussion are given in 
these listings, and cross-reference to the tables is therefore required.
The most valuable, but frustrating, of the two sections is that on fields. 
Field names are here defined as exactly that – names of fields – in contrast 
to the EPNS practice of including in this category all names below river 
or place, i.e. habitation, level. Beckensall’s strict use is refreshing, and the 
division of the book, if nothing else, prompts thinking on categorisation. 
Perhaps the emphasis has in the past been too much on a distinction 
between settlements and topographical features. Perhaps the significant 
factor is whether or not a name is attached to a feature shared by the mental 
maps of more than the immediate community – not the naming for the 
traveller that Margaret Gelling and Ann Cole would imply (The Landscape 
of Place-Names, Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), but more the adoption into 
a macro-toponomy by dint of utility, whether as a waypoint – settlement or 
otherwise – or a destination.
Field and house names can be elevated from the insecurity of the micro-
toponomy, but presumably this most often occurs through re-categorisation 
when the name is lent to some commercial or other major physical 
intervention. Otherwise, as Beckensall points out, they are subject to a 
dynamic renaming process (p. 78). In part this is due to the eradication of 
landscape features, but also because ‘[t]hose who farm have become a very 
small minority of the working and dependent population; the countryside 
is seen by some as an outlet for leisure rather than a productive asset.’ 
Indeed, the field name section serves well to illustrate how important the 
oral tradition and process is to such names, and how they are at their most 
vulnerable and variable when entrusted to a numerically small population. 
This must be all the truer when that population is a proportionally tiny one 
of declining status.
Not that change in field names is inevitable. Despite comment from the 
1330s that much of Thirston ‘lay utterly waste and uncultivated through 
the poverty of the neighbourhood destroyed by the Scots and lack of tenants 
and animals,’ Langelands in 1250 survives as Long Field, The Leys as Birk 
Lases, Ebrocks as Brock Letch, and Beneacres as Benacres in 1772 then as 
Binnacle Close (p. 87).
But the dynamic of change is well illustrated by the overlay of the maps 
of Tughall fields in 1620 and in the mid-19th century (p. 117). However, 
Peadar Morgan
173
this also demonstrates one of the great disappointments with the publishing 
of the book – the outline maps and map reproductions (some in colour), 
which illustrate the location and (two-dimensional) relationships between 
fields, require squinting and / or magnification to read. Tempus have reduced 
the maps simply to fit on one page, rather than taking the effort and space 
to spread over the fold. A further service would have been to have added 
maps showing the areas delineated in their topographical and geographical 
contexts. The very valuable collecting by Beckensall – albeit poor on source 
detail – has been sold short.
Again, the field name section has a table of elements, this time without 
even a partial key to abbreviations. Place and field elements could surely 
have been combined in a more accessible appendix rather than being lost 
mid-text. The field element table could be more explanatory in its occasional 
comments, such as the intriguing ‘Cot, coat OF, ME enclosure. OE cot = 
cottage, animal house. It seems also to mean ‘land on the border’ in local 
examples’ (p. 83), and similarly ‘ON myrr = bog, swamp, boundary’ (p. 
85). It could also incorporate all the elements discussed in the text, such 
as lazy ‘producing little’ (p. 81) (more strictly ‘untilled’, as in the former 
lazy-beds of Hebridean agriculture), and floores ‘areas between ridges in the 
open-field system’ as found in Mowdie floores 1620 ‘muddy floores’ (p. 102) 
and the strangely inverted South floorehavers 1624 ‘lands on which oats are 
grown’ (p. 108).
Once more there are groupings of names by element categories; more 
extensive in breakdown and in number, being conducted separately for each 
estate. Consistency in categories would have aided comparison, and the 
assumption is annoyingly made that the listings will be read consecutively, 
so element meanings are not repeated. There would have been merit in 
discussing the material thematically, as might have been expected from the 
book title, though dispensing with the comparison of local and contemporary 
data would not have been without loss. Either way, acknowledgement and 
discussion of the impact of, and processes behind, toponymic analogy 
would certainly have been welcome, for example with Blow Wearie and 
Blawearie (p. 96) and their many Scottish cousins.
There is at least a combined, concluding table of the field names 
discussed, with interpretations. But incredibly there are no cross-references 
to either location or discussion. In the absence of an index to the book, this 
is a near-fatal flaw (and certainly the final straw) for the academic reader.
Nevertheless the field names must be the most stimulating section 
for the Scottish reader. It gives comparative material and extends our 
knowledge of cross-border patterns. It should also shake us out of being 
Reviews
174
too one-dimensional in our linguistic analyses of names – without chance 
oral recording, lateral thinking alone would not have been sufficient to 
indicate that March Brown and Seagull Field commemorates, respectively, 
a Colonel Brown of military gait, and a one-legged bird famed for surveying 
the fieldwork from a favourite vantage point on a gate (p. 78).
PEADAR MORGAN, University of St Andrews
George Broderick, A Dictionary of Manx Place-Names. English Place-Name 
Society: Nottingham, 2006. 234 pp. £14.00. ISBN 0-904889-71-8
For the non-academic interested in Manx place-names, or anyone without 
several hundred pounds to spare, the much shorter Dictionary of Manx 
Place-Names is a concise version of the seven-volume Placenames of the Isle 
of Man series (see pp. 157–68 of this volume). It has an excellent series of 
introductions to the main corpus of the dictionary, with brief discussions 
of the various linguistic strata, a bibliography and parish maps of Man. 
The main weakness here is the pronunciation guide. Whilst the multi-
volume series uses the International Phonetic Alphabet, the approach here 
is somewhat ad hoc. For instance the vowel represented in the International 
Phonetic Alphabet as [:] is represented as ‘ar’, intuitive for a speaker of 
Southern English, but surely confusing for most other readers.
The main body of the book comprises the dictionary, which is divided 
into general names, treen names, and parish names. I found this decision 
slightly puzzling, since the average user of this book would not know into 
which category any particular name fell. Within these sections, each entry is 
listed in strict alphabetical order, giving the head-form, parish, four-figure 
OS grid reference, pronounciation, old forms, derivation and discussion, 
and type of place signified. The old forms, presumably for reasons of brevity, 
are only given with dates, not sources, greatly reducing the usefulness of this 
book for the more serious researcher. It is to be commended, however, that, 
as with the seven-volume series, the cognates of many of the Manx elements 
are given in Scottish Gaelic or Irish Gaelic orthography; for instance, under 
the entry for AWIN BALLOO (p. 5), the derivation is given as, ‘Manx 
(Mx) awin ny balloo, Gaelic (G) abhainn nam balbh, ‘river of the deaf 
people’.’ As to the selection of a name from the larger corpus for inclusion 
in this one-volume work, it would seem to be heavily biased towards the 
Manx and Scandinavian names and away from later English names.
The parish sections are usefully introduced by a short parochial history 
and a discussion of the relevant patron saints, and enhanced by illustrations 
dating from 1830 of each parish church.
Jacob King
JSNS 1, 2007, 174–75


English

Stan Beckensall: Place Names and Field Names of Northumberland

Bàn, Pangur

Mu dhèidhinn

Márkus, Gilbert

Gaelic under Pressure: a 13th-century charter from East Fife

Cox, Richard A. V.

139
PN D : J. E. B. Gover, A[llen] Mawer and F[rank] M. Stenton, 1931–32, The 
Place-Names of Devon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Survey of 
English Place-Names 8–9)).
PN Ess : P[ercy] H. Reaney, 1935, The Place-Names of Essex (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press (Survey of English Place-Names 12)).
PN Hrt : J. E. B. Gover, A[llen] Mawer and F[rank] M. Stenton, 1938, The Place-
Names of Hertfordshire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Survey of 
English Place-Names 15)).
PN La: Eilert Ekwall, 1922, The Place-Names of Lancashire (Manchester: 
Chetham Society).
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland 
(RCAHMS) website, http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/pls/portal/newcanmore.
details_gis?inumlink=67.
VEPN : David Parsons and Tania Styles, with Carole Hough, eds, 1997, The 
Vocabulary of English Place-Names: á-box (Nottingham: Centre for English 
Name Studies).
Zachrisson, R. E., 1934, Review of EPNS Vols 6–10. Zeitschrift für 
Ortsnamenforschung 10, 243–51 [at 248].
NOTES ON THE NORSE IMPACT ON HEBRIDEAN PLACE-NAMES
Richard A. V. Cox, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Arne Kruse’s article, ‘Explorers, Raiders and Settlers. The Norse Impact upon 
Hebridean Place-Names’, appears in a collection of papers delivered as part of 
a conference held jointly by the Scottish Place-name Society, the Society for 
Names Studies in Britain and Ireland and NORNA (the Society for Name 
Studies in the Nordic Countries) in Lerwick, Shetland, in April 2003.1 
His article discusses the relationship between the Norse and native peoples 
of the west of Scotland and how this affected the naming process there. The 
conclusions reached are that there was an initial, relatively short-lived, period 
of actual communication between the Norse and the local population which 
resulted in the creation of some Norse names, including those influenced by 
or based upon pre-existing, non-Norse names (e.g. ON Ljóðhús and Ívist); and 
that this period was followed by ‘blanket Norse naming, which paid no regard 
to the previous naming tradition’ (p. 141). The overall picture given is that, 
once the Norse language eventually died out in the Western Isles and the Isle 
of Skye, it was not the pre-Norse language of the area that took over, but a new 
1 I am grateful to Trygve Skomedal, University of Oslo, for discussing with me a number of 
questions raised in the following article and for his elucidation of them.
Varia
JSNS 1, 2007, 139–44
140
language, Gaelic, ‘first spoken in this area by people who had been there only as 
long as the Norse had and who owed their presence there to the Norse’ (p. 154). 
Kruse notes (p. 144) that George Henderson (1910, 185) was ‘the first 
important scholar to postulate that there must have been a clear-cut linguistic 
break’ between the pre and post-Norse settlement periods and that ‘[n]early all 
place-name scholars after Henderson have confirmed this amazing discontinuity 
...’ He proceeds to raise a number of points arguing that a counter-claim by the 
present author (see (4) below) cannot be upheld. Kruse’s argument, however, is 
undermined on a number of counts.
(1) OLD NORSE EI
Kruse refers to the late Magne Oftedal’s article in the Proceedings of the 
International Congress of Celtic Studies (1962) and his comments on the 
development of the Proto-Scandinavian (PSc) diphthong ai to ON ei. It 
would have been more appropriate to refer to his later article, ‘Norse Steinn 
in Hebridean Place-names’ (Oftedal 1964) which gives a full account of the 
phonological problems involved in this instance of the development of Old 
Norse to Gaelic. 
Essentially, Oftedal argues that Norse loans in Gaelic derived from ON 
*stainn ‘stone’, such as ScG Stainneabhal and Staoineabrig, which have a non-
palatalised initial cluster [-, are chronologically earlier than loans from 
ON steinn, such as ScG Steinnseigh and Stèineacleit, which have a palatalised 
initial cluster [- (Oftedal 1962, 48 and 1964, 228, 230). Kruse rejects this 
(pp. 145–46) on the grounds that this raising is not evident in certain West 
Norwegian dialects and that the different reflexes may therefore indicate where 
the names’ creators came from rather than when the forms were borrowed. 
However, ai in these dialects is a later development from Old Norse (ON) 
ei. This can be shown in the pronunciation of Norwegian geit ‘goat’, which is 
consistently pronounced with a palatal initial (‘jeit’) due to the original diphthong 
ei. In dialects which have ‘jait’, however, but otherwise no palatalisation before 
a, ei has since developed into ai.2 The distinction, therefore, between the reflexes 
of PSc *stainn and ON steinn cannot be taken as indicative of the provenance 
of those who originally created the names (Stainneabhal, Steinnseigh etc.), as 
Kruse suggests, but is chronologically significant.
There are similar examples cited by the present writer (in Cox 1991, 
485) with which Kruse takes issue: Scottish Gaelic (ScG) aoidh [ ] ‘ford, 
isthmus’ derives from PSc *aið (later ON eið); the Lewis place-name Rostainn 
[           (recorded as Tom Rostainn) contains a loan-name in final PSc 
2 PSc ai yielded æi in early Old Norse, later ei; palatalisation would be expected before both æi 
and ei in Scottish Gaelic.
Richard A. V. Cox
141
*-stainn (rather than later ON -steinn); and the ScG masc. personal name 
Amhlaigh [       ] is a reflex of an earlier form of ON Óleifr (see below). 
However, these forms clearly constitute relatively early loans and do not 
indicate the provenance of those from whom they were borrowed as Kruse 
prefers (pp. 145–46).
There is a further example in the ScG masc. personal name, Ùistean //, 
which retains the rounding of the initial diphthong in the PSc masc. personal 
name *Aysteinn, and predates the development of the raised diphthong in the 
later ON form, written Øysteinn or Eysteinn.3 
The ScG masc. personal name Amhlaigh [       ] was rendered Amlaib 
Ainlaeib (in which m and b represent fricatives) etc. in Early Gaelic. The 
initial vowel of the original Old Norse etymon was a low, back, rounded, 
nasal long vowel, which was interpreted initially in Scottish Gaelic as a 
+ nasal, rather than long à, hence diphthongisation of the stressed vowel 
before the lateral l in modern ScG [       ].4 Before the PSc diphthong ai 
developed into early ON æi (later ei), it could also develop into long á, hence 
doublets in Old Norse such as Ásleikr/ Áslákr, Óleifr / Óláfr. The non-palatal, 
unlenited (velarised dental) lateral in ScG [       ] might have derived from 
the monophthongal form -láf-, but final -[ ] in the modern Scottish Gaelic 
form suggests the diphthongal -aif-, thus ScG Amhlaigh derives from an early 
Norse form similar to Ánlaif. 5 
(2) GENERIC-INITIAL STRUCTURES
Of a group of generic-initial structured, Norse-derived names in Lewis, e.g. 
Steinn Langa,6 it is disappointing that Kruse refers (p. 146) only to early remarks 
made about them (in Cox 1991[, 489–90]) – perhaps in order to mount his 
argument – and not to more recent research on these and similar names (in 
Cox 2004; a version of which is reprinted here, pp. 15–30) which shows that 
examples of this and other generic-initial structures in the Faroes, Shetland, 
3 (‘[E]y (av au) maa endnu i begyndelsen av det 10. aarh. ha vært et tydelig a + y [ey (from au) 
must have been clearly a + y even at the beginning of the 10th century]’, Marstrander 1915, 
72); so AU 874 Oistin. 
4 Cf. ScG coinnleir, Early Gaelic cainnleòir < caindleóir, with a nasalised diphthong before the 
lateral.
5 Oftedal (1956, 92) suggests a derivation from Anlaif (i.e. Ánlaif   ) where n represents a 
‘disappearing but yet perceptible nasal consonant’. Similarly, the nasal stressed vowel in the 
ScG personal name Ìomhar suggests a derivation from ON Ívar acc. with nasal stressed í (ibid., 
96; cf. the Old English Norse loan Inwer, Marstrander 1915, 9, 67 and 150). 
6 Steinn Langa  < ON Steininn Langa ‘the long stone’, Beirgh Làgha < 
ON Bergit Lága ‘the low promontory’, Lidh Langa < ON Hlíðin Langa ‘the long 
hillside’, and Amar Sìne < ON Hamarinn Sýna ‘the prospect crag’.
Varia
142
Orkney, Caithness, St Kilda and Lewis provide evidence for a relatively late 
stratum of names throughout the Altantic province: they are far more significant 
than the noa-names (names replacing taboo names) he claims they are and are 
important for providing evidence of Norse settlement at a relatively late date in 
the northern part of the Western Isles.
(3) GAELIC LOANS IN OLD NORSE NAMES
Kruse argues that there is no evidence of any Gaelic place-names with Norse 
names. 
There are Norse-originated names which contain Gaelic loans. In the case 
of forms such as Buaileabhal, Buaileabhair and Buaileabhig, Creagastrom and 
Cliasam Creag, and Lianacleit and Lianacuidh, we are probably looking at names 
which contain loan-words – i.e. words borrowed from the Gaelic lexicon and 
used in the creation of Norse names – from Early Gaelic (EG) búaile ‘enclosure’, 
EG crec ‘rock’ and EG lénae (ScG liana) ‘meadow’, respectively. Perhaps the 
mostly widely-known example of a Gaelic loan-word in Old Norse place-names 
is EG áirge ‘milking-place; later shieling’, as in, for example, Trosairigh and 
Seafairigh in the Uists.
Examples of Gaelic place-names used in the creation of Old Norse-
originated place-names are understandably much more difficult to identify 
with any certainty. One certain example seems to be Camas Thairbearnais ‘the 
bay of Tairbearnais’ in Canna. ScG Tairbearnais is a loan from an Old Norse 
form consisting of a form of EG tairbert (ScG tairbeart ‘isthmus’) + ON nes 
‘promontory’ – the name of the isthmus in Gaelic is still An Tairbeart today. A 
further example may be the Lewis name, Clach Eilistean ‘the rock of Eilistean’ < 
EG ail ‘rock’ + ON steinn ‘stone, rock’. 
Frequently, however, we may never be able to tell whether a particular Norse 
name form contains a Gaelic loan-word or loan-name. It is possible also that 
several of the place-names in the isles that to date remain obscure or partly 
obscure in fact contain borrowed place-names whose origins are no longer 
recognisable. A host of obscure or partly obscure names litters the islands, and 
we do not yet know whether they are simply Norse name forms which have 
been Gaelicised beyond recognition, whether they are Norse names which 
originally contained Gaelic or even Pictish names, or something else.
(4) ON THE QUESTION OF THE PRE-NORSE LANGUAGE OF THE ISLES
As far as I know there is general agreement that no Gaelic names can be shown 
to be pre-Norse creations. There are names, particularly those involving biblical 
dedications, however, which may have pre-Norse associations, although they 
cannot be shown unequivocally to be pre-Norse.
Richard A. V. Cox
143
Nevertheless, evidence from the nomenclature suggests that Norse-Gaelic 
contact took place over several hundred years, perhaps from the earliest period 
of Norse settlement up to the time of the transition of the sovereignty of 
the isles, and possibly beyond (Cox, forthcoming7). In spite of the sense of 
continuity that this evidence suggests, however, there is no direct evidence for 
the language spoken in the isles prior to the advent of Norse settlers. Yet, the 
lack of identifiably pre-Norse Gaelic names does not prove that the language 
of the pre-Norse population was Pictish any more than the lack of identifiably 
pre-Norse Pictish names proves that it was Gaelic. 
In the vacuum created by the lack of direct linguistic evidence for the pre-
Norse language of the isles, it is this sense of continuity which suggests to 
the present writer – albeit without any particular sense of conviction – that 
Gaelic may have been spoken there prior to Norse settlement, but so may have 
Pictish.
Kruse argues that the Norse killed off or otherwise removed the previous 
population and subsequently brought Gaels as slaves to the islands. From the 
point of view of a rudimentary history, this is convenient: it places Picts to 
the north-west of Dalriada, and offers an explanation as to why we have no 
evidence of pre-Norse Pictish names, no evidence of pre-Norse Gaelic names, 
but plenty of evidence for relatively transparent, apparently relatively modern 
Gaelic names.
Whatever the case, the evidence of the nomenclature – of the phonological 
development of Old Norse to Scottish Gaelic – as well as needing continuing 
research, needs to be included in any evaluation of the nature of Norse settlement 
and of Norse-Gaelic contact in the west of Scotland.
REFERENCES
Cox, Richard A. V., 1987, Place-names of the Carloway Registry, Isle of Lewis 
(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow).
Cox, Richard A. V., 1991, ‘Norse-Gaelic Contact in the West of Lewis: The 
place-name evidence’, in Language Contact in the British Isles, Proceedings of 
the Eighth International Symposium on Language Contact in Europe, Douglas, 
Isle of Man, 1988, ed. P. Sture Ureland and George Broderick, Linguistische 
Arbeiten 238, 479–94.
Cox, Richard A. V., 2004, ‘The Norse Element in Scottish Place Names: syntax 
as a chronological marker’, in Unity in Diversity: Studies in Irish and Scottish 
Gaelic Language, Literature and History, ed. Cathal Ó Háinle and Donald 
Meek, Léann na Tríonóide/Trinity Irish Studies No. 1 (Dublin: The School of 
7 Some of this evidence is discussed in Cox 1987, but Kruse does not refer to it.
Varia
144
Irish, Trinity College), 37–49. [A version of this article can be found on pp. 
13–26 of this volume.]
Cox, Richard A. V., forthcoming, ‘Old Norse Loan-words in Scottish Gaelic’, 
Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Celtica Upsaliensia 7, Proceedings of the 
7th Symposium of Societas Celtologica Nordica (Oslo, May 2005), ed. Jan Erik 
Rekdal (Uppsala).
Henderson, George, 1910, The Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland (Glasgow).
Kruse, Arne, 2005, ‘Explorers, Raiders and Settlers. The Norse Impact upon 
Hebridean Place-Names’, in Cultural Contacts in the North Atlantic Region: 
The Evidence of Names, ed. Peder Gammeltoft, Carole Hough and Doreen 
Waugh (Lerwick), 141–56.
Marstrander, Carl J. S., 1915, Bidrag til det norske sprogs historie i Irland (Kristiania).
Oftedal, Magne, 1956, The Gaelic of Leurbost, Isle of Lewis, A Linguistic 
Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland III, Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap 
Supplementary Vol. IV (Oslo).
Oftedal, Magne, 1962, ‘Norse Place-Names in Celtic Scotland’, Proceedings of 
the International Congress of Celtic Studies (1959) (Dublin), 43–50.
Oftedal, Magne, 1964, ‘Norse Steinn in Hebridean Place-Names’, 
Fróðskaparrit 13, 225–34.
PICTS IN THE WEST IN THE 670S? SOME THOUGHTS ON AU 673.3 AND AU 
676.3
James E. Fraser, University of Edinburgh
Among its records for the year 673 (recte 672), the Annals of Ulster contain the 
notice gabail Eliuin mc Cuirp 7 Conamail filii Canonn, ‘the capture [of Eliuin mc 
Cuirp ?] and of Conamail mac Canonn’ (AU 673.3; Hennessy 1887, 126 note). 
Conamail may be identified fairly readily. A Conamail mac Canonn appears in 
the early eighth-century Dalriadic genealogical tractate Cethri prímchenéla Dáil 
Riata as a scion of Cenél nGabráin, whilst the killing of a man of this name in 
705 (iugulatio Conamlo (sic) m. Canonn) is recorded later in the same chronicle 
(CP §17; AU 705.4). This man’s appearance in Cethri prímchenéla occurs 
couched within the pedigree of his son, Congus, who may be identified as the 
father of Talorc mac Congusso, a Dalriadic figure who flourished (probably in 
the Cenél nGabráin kingdom of Kintyre) in the 730s, until his capture by his 
brother, who turned him over to hostile Picts in 734 (AU 731.6; AU 734.5; 
Dumville 2000, 187; Fraser 2004, 87–88). It is an interesting point that both 
grandfather and grandson appear to have suffered the indignity of capture. 
The chronicle record of the late seventh century, originating largely from the 
James E. Fraser
— —
JSNS 1, 2007, 144–48


Notes on the Norse Impact on Hebridean Place-names

Coates, Richard

¹ Doreen Waugh (pers. comm.) has kindly provided the following historical context for the 
stone: ‘The standing stone itself is quite remarkable and the part of Unst in which it is located 
had significant early Norse settlement (e.g. the excavations at Underhoull and much more 
recently at Setter, near Belmont). Bordastubble is also quite close to Crosbister, and the only 
Shetland example of Kirkaby is not too far away. Lund was also an important site.’ I emphasise 
that no documentary references to the stone are known.
² In fact, evidence for medial <n>, indicating that the first element was treated as a weak 
noun/name, is present before the Conquest only in the name of Barnstaple, and variably only 
in coin legends. After the Conquest, spellings have either <d> or <n>, but never both, and 
whilst both types appear in central government documents, <n> never appears in such more 
local documents as feet of fines and assize rolls. <n> never appears at all in the record of the 
other four names. These facts are consistent with the idea that *barðu-stapul- was not always 
anglicised morphologically. Anglicisation may therefore reduce to substitution of  for , 
dialectally suitable adjustment of the first vowel, and substitution of  for  in the final 
syllable.
VARIA
BORDASTUBBLE, A STANDING-STONE IN UNST, SHETLAND, AND SOME 
IMPLICATIONS FOR ENGLISH TOPONYMY
Richard Coates, University of the West of England
Near Burragarth, at NGR HP578033, by the road leading to the old church 
beside the bay of Lunda Wick, is a 3.8m (12ft) high standing-stone called 
Bordastubble (RCAHMS NMRS number: HP50SE 9). This stone is of 
considerable onomastic interest in its own right and beyond Scotland. Judging 
by appearances – I know of no early spellings and Jakobsen (1936) does not 
mention it – this name embodies Old Norse *bôrðu-stôpull ‘battle-axe pillar/
post’.1 If that is so, it enables us to re-evaluate the recurrent Old English name-
type reconstructed as *Beardan-stapol and discussed fully by the editors of 
VEPN (1, p. 65). The proposed ON and proposed OE forms are philologically 
precise counterparts. 
Arngart (1978, 14–15) assumed that this name-type was English, and 
proposed an unattested OE *bearde ‘battle-axe’ as a cognate of ON barða ‘battle-
axe’ to explain it. If this solution is in the right area, we are presumably dealing 
with an allusion to the great length of the shaft of the northern axe, usually from 
1.2–1.8m (4–6ft); and, if so, it seems more likely that we are dealing with a 
borrowing of, rather than a cognate of, the Scandinavian word in its pre-ON, 
Common Scandinavian, form *barðu-stapul-, minimally anglicised in phonology 
and morphology.2 That would mean that the English place-names concerned 
(Barnstaple etc. – see below) most probably date from after the first contacts with 
vikings, i.e. after about 800. We should note that Bordastubble is tall, though not 
slender (it has a belly whose maximum width is 2.5m (8ft)), and that if this account 
JSNS 1, 2007, 137–39
138
is correct the allusion involved in the name is just to a vertically dominant profile, 
i.e. greater height than breadth though not to a specially marked degree.
Whilst Arngart offered no other evidence of *bearde in OE compounds, he 
drew attention to such analogous names as Gartree ‘spear-tree’ (a Lincolnshire 
wapentake, Cameron 1998, 48) and Garstang ‘spear-post’ (Lancashire, PN La 
163), both names of fully Scandinavian origin, and the analogy underlines the 
probability of Scandinavian credentials for the word we are investigating. 
We can accept the formal aspect of Arngart’s proposal without committing 
ourselves to his suggested meaning of an assembly-place characterised by the 
waving of weapons, or to VEPN  ’s more prosaic suggestion that the recurrent 
compound denoted some kind of chopping-block, perhaps a judicial one. 
Whilst neither of these suggestions is impossible, we may conjecture that there 
was a standing-stone, now removed, in at least some of the five relevant English 
places (Barnstaple, Devon (PN D 25); Barstable in Basildon, site of a hundred 
meeting-place, Essex (PN Ess 140–41); the lost Berdestapel, parish uncertain, 
Bedfordshire (PN BdHu 298); and the lost Berdestapelesholme, Stanstead, as 
well as probably Bastow Hill, Anstey/Barkway, both Hertfordshire (PN Hrt 
296)). 
It seems to me that, on the balance of probability, we may safely discount 
other suggestions mentioned but not endorsed in VEPN : that the name-type 
involves OE beard ‘beard’, or a weak side-form of this (Zachrisson 1938, 248, 
invoking the sense ‘edge’ shown by its ON cognate barð ), or a male personal 
name derived from it (evidence for which is reviewed in PN D 25),3 and also 
that the first element is OE (ge-)bearded (Sigurd Karlström’s suggestion, rejected 
already in PN D 25 note, because of the heavy elision required in defiance of 
the spellings recorded in OE).
REFERENCES
Arngart, Olof, 1978, ‘Barstable: further notes towards an explanation’, Namn 
och Bygd 68, 10–18.
Cameron, Kenneth, 1998, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names 
(Nottingham: English Place-Name Society).
Jakobsen, Jakob, 1936, The Place-Names of Shetland (London: Nutt) [Facsimile 
reprint Kirkwall: The Orcadian (1993).]
PN BdHu: A[llen] Mawer and F[rank] M. Stenton, 1926, The Place-Names of 
Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 
(Survey of English Place-Names 3)).
³ It must be acknowledged that the present proposal leaves the claimed relationship (if real) of 
Barnstaple to Barnacott in Stoke Rivers (PN D 69) problematic, unless the 13th-century form 
Beardingecote (in a personal name) is highly elliptical for ‘cottage of those of “Bard[staple]” ’.
Richard Coates
139
PN D : J. E. B. Gover, A[llen] Mawer and F[rank] M. Stenton, 1931–32, The 
Place-Names of Devon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Survey of 
English Place-Names 8–9)).
PN Ess : P[ercy] H. Reaney, 1935, The Place-Names of Essex (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press (Survey of English Place-Names 12)).
PN Hrt : J. E. B. Gover, A[llen] Mawer and F[rank] M. Stenton, 1938, The Place-
Names of Hertfordshire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Survey of 
English Place-Names 15)).
PN La: Eilert Ekwall, 1922, The Place-Names of Lancashire (Manchester: 
Chetham Society).
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland 
(RCAHMS) website, http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/pls/portal/newcanmore.
details_gis?inumlink=67.
VEPN : David Parsons and Tania Styles, with Carole Hough, eds, 1997, The 
Vocabulary of English Place-Names: á-box (Nottingham: Centre for English 
Name Studies).
Zachrisson, R. E., 1934, Review of EPNS Vols 6–10. Zeitschrift für 
Ortsnamenforschung 10, 243–51 [at 248].
NOTES ON THE NORSE IMPACT ON HEBRIDEAN PLACE-NAMES
Richard A. V. Cox, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Arne Kruse’s article, ‘Explorers, Raiders and Settlers. The Norse Impact upon 
Hebridean Place-Names’, appears in a collection of papers delivered as part of 
a conference held jointly by the Scottish Place-name Society, the Society for 
Names Studies in Britain and Ireland and NORNA (the Society for Name 
Studies in the Nordic Countries) in Lerwick, Shetland, in April 2003.1 
His article discusses the relationship between the Norse and native peoples 
of the west of Scotland and how this affected the naming process there. The 
conclusions reached are that there was an initial, relatively short-lived, period 
of actual communication between the Norse and the local population which 
resulted in the creation of some Norse names, including those influenced by 
or based upon pre-existing, non-Norse names (e.g. ON Ljóðhús and Ívist); and 
that this period was followed by ‘blanket Norse naming, which paid no regard 
to the previous naming tradition’ (p. 141). The overall picture given is that, 
once the Norse language eventually died out in the Western Isles and the Isle 
of Skye, it was not the pre-Norse language of the area that took over, but a new 
1 I am grateful to Trygve Skomedal, University of Oslo, for discussing with me a number of 
questions raised in the following article and for his elucidation of them.
Varia
JSNS 1, 2007, 139–44


Bordastubble, a Standing-stone in Unst, Shetland, and Some Implications for English Toponymy

Not a member yet

Stan Beckensall: Place Names and Field Names of Northumberland

Mu dhèidhinn

Gaelic under Pressure: a 13th-century charter from East Fife

Notes on the Norse Impact on Hebridean Place-names

Bordastubble, a Standing-stone in Unst, Shetland, and Some Implications for English Toponymy

209

305