SPNS AGM & SPRING CONFERENCE 2026 – 2 MAY 2026 – INVERNESS

Roddy McLean

The Celtic Place-Names of Inverness: An appraisal of Professor William J. Watson’s scholarship on place-names in and around the Highland capital.

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Jake King

Further Scottish Place-Name Papers of William J. Watson
1865-1948: talk and book-launch

To celebrate one century since the publication of Watson’s Celtic Place-Names of Scotland, Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba is proud to be publishing Further Scottish Place-Name Papers. This book aims to bring together, for the first time, all of Watson’s place-name material not already included in works published in Watson’s lifetime, or in the earlier volume Scottish Place-Name Papers (2002). The book includes previously unpublished articles from the Carmichael–Watson Collection, articles omitted from earlier collections, letters published in newspapers, extracts from the works of other authors incorporating Watson’s views, material from his fieldwork notebooks, private correspondence, and other assorted pieces. An appendix seeks to identify as many as possible of Watson’s informants.

The book launch will comprise a talk about the issues in compiling and editing the book, followed by an opportunity to buy copies.

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Robert Black

Old Clachnacuddin Place-Names

(i) Resisting Interpretation: Clusters & Contentious Place-names

An investigation into various problematic place-names in Inverness: an analysis of their surroundings, history and forms in seeking an outline of a route forward.  

(ii) Situating the Historic Place in Urban Highland

The case for embedding historic place-names into the onomastic ‘infrastructure’ of the urban Highland setting in the 21st century and how historic place-names provide context, meaning and a sense of place.  

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Nevis Hulme

W. J. Watson and the place-names of Gairloch

This talk takes W. J. Watson’s Place-names of Ross and Cromarty (1904) as its starting point and will examine a few of the entries found in the parish of Gairloch in Wester Ross. It will include analyses of the significance of the elements faithir and crasg as they occur in the broader area. The presentation will draw on the late Dr Roy Wentworth’s unpublished work on place-names around Loch Gairloch.

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Peadar Morgan

The Fishertons of Petty and Ardersier

The south-eastern shingle shore of the Inverness Firth has – depending on scale – two Fisherton names extant on the OS maps. But there have been four settlements sporting this name in fairly recent times along a short stretch of coastline, with variation in languages, spelling, affixes and application from the fifteenth century until the present day. Fisherton appears on large scale mapping (OS 1:4,622k), though nowhere here is the name signposted. I propose to outline my attempts to unravel the confusion, and in so doing highlight the use of genealogical resources to toponymically unpick late-period endogamous settlements. If time permits, I will go on to exorcise the ghost fishing community of Blacktown from under Fort George at the mouth of the firth.

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Sarah Hobbs (Cairngorm Stories)

Unmapped places of the Cairngorms: stories from a living landscape

I would like to share the brand new online audio map of ‘living’ placenames of the Cairngorms, as used by people who live or work in the high hills, but which may not have been mapped or recorded previously. 81 people, from reindeer herders to ecologists to snowboarders, contributed 304 placenames – and this is barely scratching the surface. The names collected cover a variety of themes such as Anglicisation, land use change, climate change, liminality, and the otherworld. They help to make visible the variety of human relationships within a ‘wild’ landscape.