SPNS Autumn Conference 2024 – 2 November 2024 – Online, via Zoom

AUTUMN CONFERENCE

Saturday, 2 November 2024
Online, via Zoom

The next SPNS Conference will be on Saturday 2 November 2024. It will  be online via Zoom. It will start at 10.00 and finish at 15.45.

We will publish further information and booking instructions on this page soon. 

Please consider subscribing for our electronic newsletter at the bottom of this page. This would allow us to e-mail you with news and updates – for example, when the booking instructions have been published.

CONFERENCE PLAN

10:00 – 10:10Welcome!
10:10 – 10:40‘An Overview of Minority Place-Name Policy and Management in the UK’
Guy Puzey, University of Edinburgh
10:40 – 11:10‘They were effectually Civiliz’d in time of the Late Lord Reae’?: early church place-names in North West Sutherland’
Gemma Smith, University of Glasgow
11:10 – 11:30Break
11:30 – 11:45‘Studying the meaning of Scottish Gaelic words for landscape features through linguistic and place-name evidence’
Rebecca Madlener, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, UHI
11:45 – 12:00‘Ecological methods and place-name analysis: a study of the scottish wildcat’
Lauren Cleland, University of Glasgow
12:00 – 12:30‘Place-names on the New Cumnock History Website: a holistic approach’
Robert Guthrie, Independent Researcher
12:30 – 14:00Lunch
14:00 – 14:30‘Three Place-name elements from Harris’
Fañch Bihan-Gallic, Dòrlach
14:30 – 14:45Comparing the street-names of India and Pakistan
Varshneyee Dutt, University of Glasgow
14:45 – 15:00‘Using Geographical Information Systems as a method of typifying the place names of Aberdeenshire by language’
John Ball, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, UHI
15:00 – 15:30‘The Ainmean Charraige/Carrick Names project’
Colin MacKenzie, Independent Researcher
15:30 – 15:50Summing Up & Fin

ABSTRACTS

‘An Overview of Minority Place-Name Policy and Management in the UK’
Guy Puzey, University of Edinburgh

This talk will summarise some key findings from a chapter written about the UK for a forthcoming multi-volume international handbook on the standardisation and regulation of place names across Europe from a minority-language perspective.

***

‘They were effectually Civiliz’d in time of the Late Lord Reae’?: early church place-names in North West Sutherland’
Gemma Smith, University of Glasgow

Did the third Lord Reay really build the first church in Eddrachillis? A topnonymic survey for the North West Highland Geopark’s Pilgrim’s Trail project uncovered a number of annaid and teampull place-names in the region that suggest otherwise. This paper presents the evidence for early church settlement beyond Balnakiel in the Eddrachillis, Durness and Tongue Community Council areas.

***

‘Studying the meaning of Scottish Gaelic words for landscape features through linguistic and place-name evidence’
Rebecca Madlener, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, UHI

This paper is an introduction to my PhD research which looks at the meaning of Scottish Gaelic words for landscape features. It combines evidence from the language as it is spoken today and as it is used in historical texts with evidence from place-names and the physical reality of named landscape features. My main research questions concern the precise meaning of individual terms, and the overarching semantic structure of the Gaelic landscape vocabulary (i.e. are landscape features distinguished based on their size, shape, use etc.?).

***

‘Place-names on the New Cumnock History Website: a holistic approach’
Robert Guthrie, Independent Researcher

This talk will look at the place-name component on the NCH website

Place-names – NEW CUMNOCK HISTORY

and the range of information, written, pictorial and cartographic, which considered together help the analysis of some tricky place-names.

***

‘Three Place-name elements from Harris’
Fañch Bihan-Gallic, Dòrlach

Gaelic oral tradition still preserves thousands of unrecorded place-names. While Gaelic toponymy has been extensively studied in many parts of the country, others still require attention, and Harris is one of them. Over the past two and a half years, I have collected place-names in North Harris and Scalpay in the hope to create exhaustive maps of the area. This paper presents a snippet of that data through three unique place-name elements: Motha, Sginn, and Glòraig.

***

‘Using Geographical Information Systems as a method of typifying the place names of Aberdeenshire by language’
John Ball, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, UHI

The project aimed to rapidly test the claims of previous researchers about the numeric and spatial distribution of the linguistic origins of Aberdeenshire placenames. This talk will look at the methodology and results based on the programmatic analysis of nearly 5,000 names before a brief discussion of its limitations and potential enhancements for future studies.

***

‘The Ainmean Charraige/Carrick Names project’
Colin MacKenzie, Independent Researcher

The Ainmean Charraige/Carrick Names project is collecting, analysing and mapping place-names from the nine parishes of the historic earldom of Carrick in southern Ayrshire. To date we have gathered over 17,000 historic forms for just over 3,000 place-names. This paper will outline the project’s aims, some distinctive features of our database design and application, and plans for the future, including the integration of personal-name data. While the project covers all historic languages of Carrick, the paper will focus on Gaelic place-names, which were one theme of our recent conference on Carrick’s Gaelic Heritage.

ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER

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