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

‘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.

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‘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.

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‘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.?).

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‘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.

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‘Some 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.

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‘Comparing the street-names of India and Pakistan‘
Varshneyee Dutt, University of Glasgow

Please CLICK HERE to access a PDF poster with information about this talk.

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‘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.

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‘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.