BLITON

This work brings together notes on P-Celtic place-name elements to be found in northern England and southern Scotland assembled by the author between 2001 and 2012, in the course of research on the history of the Brittonic language in southern Scotland and northern England between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

The main body of the work, in Volume 2, comprises a dictionary of P-Celtic elements (in their neo-Brittonic forms) that occur – or, in the opinion of scholars, may occur – in place-names in the regions between the Forth and Loch Lomond in the north and the Humber and Mersey in the south. The entries include etymological information, references to authoritative writings on philological questions, discussion of semantic issues, details of place-names found in Classical and Early Medieval sources and in early Welsh literature referring to the ‘Old North’, and full lists of current and obsolete place-names in which these elements (may) occur, with references to published records of early forms and scholarly discussions of these names.

Volume 1 contains a substantial Introduction, Bibliography, List of Abbreviations, Guide to Pronunciation, and several lists of elements including a glossary of Modern Welsh equivalents. Volume 3 contains an index of all place-names discussed in the work.

Alan James 2014.

Note from the Web Coordinator: Dr Alan G. James has kindly provided the most up-to-date version of his work. The links below contain Brittonic Language in the Old North, last updated October 2024.