SCOTTISH PLACE-NAMES RESOURCE

SHEET
Some reference works and on-line resources, compiled by Simon Taylor
University of Glasgow
[email protected]
READING MATERIAL
Note that a full bibliography, including a section on regional studies, arranged by pre-1975
county, can be
found on the
Scottish Place-Name
Society website:
http://www.spns.org.uk/bibliography09.html
MAIN WORKS
Nicolaisen, W. F. H., 1976, Scottish Place-Names (London; revised edition 1979: new revised
edition, Edinburgh (John Donald) 2001). Paperback.: This is the only full scholarly study of
Scottish place-names in book form. Although in need of revision in various ways, it remains
the best general introduction to the subject.
Watson, William J., 1926, The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (Edinburgh and
London): for individual names, the best book on the Celtic (British, Pictish and Gaelic) placenames. Although not easy to use in parts, it always repays the effort. Latest edition Birlinn
2004 with introduction, some addenda and corrigenda, and full Watson bibliography, by
Simon Taylor; reprinted Edinburgh (Birlinn) 2011 with Taylors introduction, expanded
addenda & corrigenda and expanded Watson bibliography. Paperback. Some chapters are
available online on the SPNS web-site. It is often abbreviated simply as CPNS.
Good short general introductions are the sections on Scottish place-names in:
Atlas of Scottish History to 1707, ed. Peter McNeill and Hector MacQueen (1996), pp. 50-1,
5870 [though some distribution maps need redoing]. The Atlas is now available online on:
http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/digital-volumes/published-gazetteers-and-atlases/atlasscottish-history-1707 [with different pagination, namely pp. 72-3 and 8092)]
Celtic Culture: An Encyclopedia, ed. John T. Koch 5 vols (Santa Barbara, USA 2006) (S.
Taylor), pp. 159294.
The Companion to Gaelic Scotland, ed. D.S. Thomson (rev. ed. Glasgow 1994), pp. 22636
(various authors, including K.H. Jackson and W.F.H. Nicolaisen).
The Edinburgh Companion to the Gaelic Language, ed. Moray Watson and Michelle
MacLeod (Edinburgh University Press 2010), pp. 4662 (R. A. V. Cox).
The Edinburgh Companion to Scots, ed. John Corbett et al. (Edinburgh University Press
2003), pp. 1730 (M. Scott).
Oxford Companion to Scottish History, gen. ed. Michael Lynch (Oxford 2001), pp. 47984
(S. Taylor).
Note also Introduction to Uses of Place-Names ed. S. Taylor (Edinburgh 1998): pp. 1-11.

WEB-BASED and OTHER RESOURCES

The following section is arranged alphabetically by subject area. These are:
Field-names, Gaelic Names and Pronunciation, Hagiotoponyms (Saints in PlaceNames), Maps, Norse Place-Names, Ordnance Survey Name Books, Parishes,
Place-Name Collection, Place-Name Elements, Place-Name Walks, Place-Names in
Schools, ScotlandsPlaces, Scots, Scottish Place-Name Society
FIELD-NAMES. Every field once had a name, most of them never appearing on any
published map, and these are a very important resource, preserving, for example, knowledge
of lost settlements, local dialect, names of past tenants and neighbours, as well as farming
practices old and new. The School of Scottish Studies (Scottish Place-Name Survey), now
part of Celtic & Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, holds collections of field-names
from various parts of Scotland, and the Kinross-shire Historical Society, Loch Leven Campus,
Kinross, holds an almost complete record of Kinross-shire field-names collected in the 1970s.
Field-name collection sheets based on those used by the Scottish Place-Name Survey can be
obtained from Simon Taylor.
GAELIC NAMES and PRONUNCIATION. There are good Gaelic sound files for placenames
(as
well
as
for
common
nouns)
on
the
following
site:
http://www.learngaelic.net/dictionary/. While the sound file coverage is not yet complete,
they are being added all the time (by BBC Alba).
Gaelic sound files for some Munros can be found on http://www.cnag.org/en/mountain-names
Gaelic sound files for some place-names, as well as reliable analysis of meaning, can be
found in the Database of Ainmean-ite na h-Alba/Gaelic Place-Names on
http://www.gaelicplacenames.org.
See also PLACE-NAME ELEMENTS, below.
There are four good, substantial booklets on place-names produced by Scottish Natural
Heritage, all free from SNH, and available online on www.snh.org.uk
MacIlleathain, Ruaraidh, 2007, Gaelic in the Landscape: Place names in the North West
Highlands/A Ghidhlig air Aghaidh na Tre: Ainmean-ite ann an Iar-thuath na
Gidhealtachd, Scottish Natural Heritage (bilingual Gaelic and English, with a guide to the
Gaelic pronunciation of each name discussed. Currently out of print, so only available
online).
MacIlleathain, Ruaraidh, nd, Gaelic and Norse in the Landscape: Place names in Caithness
and Sutherland/A Ghidhlig is Lochlannais air Aghaidh na Tre: Ainmean-ite ann an
Gallaibh, Cataibh is Dthaich MhicAoidh, Scottish Natural Heritage (bilingual Gaelic and
English, with a guide to the Gaelic pronunciation of each name discussed).
King, Jacob, and Cotter, Michelle, 2011, Gaelic in the Landscape: Place-names in Islay and
Jura/A Ghidhlig air Aghaidh na Tre: AinmeaniteannanleagusDira(Scottish Natural
Heritage/Dualchas Ndair na h-Alba and Ainmean-ite na h-Alba/Gaelic Place-Names of
Scotland).
King, Jacob, and Clyne, Heather, nd [2013], Gaelic in the Landscape: The Rough Bounds of
Lochaber/ A Ghidhlig air Aghaidh na Tre: Garbh-Crochan Loch Abar (Scottish Natural
Heritage/Dualchas Ndair na h-Alba and Ainmean-ite na h-Alba/Gaelic Place-Names of
Scotland).
The best Scottish Gaelic Dictionary remains Edward Dwellys The Illustrated GaelicEnglish Dictionary (190111; various editions and reprints), though it needs to be handled
with some care. It is online (in both a Gaelic and an English version) on:
http://www.dwelly.info/
HAGIOTOPONYMS. This is the technical term for a place-name which commemorates a
saint. These can range from important towns (e.g. St Andrews) to small wells. Thanks to a
Leverhulme-funded project based at the University of Glasgow, there is an excellent and

comprehensive Database of Scottish Hagiotoponyms (DoSH for short!) online on

http://www.saintsplaces.gla.ac.uk/
MAPS. The National Library of Scotland (Map Library) runs an excellent website
http://maps.nls.uk/ on which you can access detailed maps of the counties of Scotland as far
back as the manuscript maps of Timothy Pont made in the 1590s, and including the allimportant Ordnance Survey 1st edition 6 inch.
Ordnance Survey: the first complete mapping of Scotland was conducted by the British
army Ordnance Survey in the mid-nineteenth century, and laid the foundations for the maps
and the forms of names that we are so familiar with today. It was at a scale of 6 inches to the
mile (in some places also 25 inches to the mile), and contains over a quarter of a million
names. Scotland is very fortunate in still having an almost complete record of this enterprise
in the form of the Ordnance Survey Object Name Books, usually known as the Ordnance
Survey Name Books: these are hand-written notes made by the surveyors, and include
descriptions and other information about every single place-name that appears on this map
series, sometimes including how the place got its name, local stories and often, in the case of
names recorded in Gaelic orthography, a translation into English. They also include details of
institutions such as schools, hospitals, churches and poors houses, as well as of archaeological
features such as cairns and hill-forts. In addition they list the names of the people who gave or
confirmed the form of every place-name: usually three people for each name, but if the
informants are at variance, the number increases, and the reasons are given for the Ordnance
Surveys final decision. These Name Books are a very valuable resource, not just for studying
place-names, but for local studies in general, giving a snap shot of a community in the midnineteenth century. Digital images of the Name Books for all Scottish counties, now fully
indexed, are available on ScotlandsPlaces website (see SCOTLANDSPLACES, below).
There is also the possibility of involvement in the ScotlandsPlaces crowd-sourcing
transcription project. Active involvement in this project gives free online access to all
digitised resources; otherwise there is a fee (5 per month).
NOTE ALSO: http://maplandbritain.co.uk/ for giant jigsaw OS maps of Scotland.
NORSE PLACE-NAMES aka SCANDINAVIAN PLACE-NAMES
See PLACE-NAME ELEMENTS, below.

ORDNANCE SURVEY NAME BOOKS

See MAPS, above.
PARISHES
While there is no map that will depict the precise medieval parishes, the National Library of
Scotland now has online the index maps from the Ordnance Survey 19th-century 6-inch
maps, and these have the pre-1891 parish boundaries on county-wide maps.
http://maps.nls.uk/os/county_series_list.html
For parishes between 1891 and 1975, go to:
http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/, then click on the relevant county on the interactive
map or the accompanying list. For more on this website, see SCOTLANDSPLACES, below.
For parishes and parish boundaries, medieval and modern, see also the new website of the
Mapping of the Historical Parishes of Scotland group:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/cehp/mapping-parishes-medieval-scotland/
PLACE-NAME COLLECTION

A methodology for the collection and analysis of Scottish place-names has been developed
over the past ten years, and has been adopted by the recently established Survey of Scottish
Place-Names, under the auspices of the Scottish Place-Name Society. It has been deployed in
the 5-volume series The Place-Names of Fife by S. Taylor with G. Mrkus (Donington 200612), as well as in The Place-Names of Bute by G. Mrkus (Donington 2012), and is most fully
described in the Introductions to these volumes.
PLACE-NAME ELEMENTS:
There are OS web-booklets for three of the languages which have made an important
contribution to the place-names of Scotland: Gaelic, Scandinavian (Norse) and Scots. Each
consists of an Introduction, which includes some basic grammar as it relates to place-name
formation, and a Glossary of common place-name elements.
For Gaelic Place-Names (Introduction by Simon Taylor):
The pdf of the 41-page booklet, with Introduction, can be downloaded on:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/docs/ebooks/guide-to-gaelic-origins-of-placenames.pdf
For Scandinavian (Norse) Place-Names (Introduction by Anke-Beate Stahl):
The pdf of the 12-page booklet, with Introduction, can be downloaded on:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/docs/ebooks/guide-to-scandinavian-origins-ofplace-names.pdf
For Scots Place-Names (Introduction by Simon Taylor):
The pdf of the 22-page booklet, with Introduction, can be downloaded on:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/docs/ebooks/guide-to-scots-origins-of-placenames.pdf
There is a fourth such site concerning Welsh Place-Names; see:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/support/knowledgebase/place-nameorigins/welsh/index.html

Very helpful to use with Watsons History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (see
READING MATERIAL, above) is the Elements Index (compiled by Eric Basden and Alan
James, with contributions by Angus Watson) to be found on the SPNS web-site:
http://www.spns.org.uk/WatsIndex2.html
For a full discussion of all words found in Fife place-names (Pictish, Gaelic, Scots, Norse,
French), see the Elements Glossary in The Place-Names of Fife 5 (Discussion, Glossaries
and Edited Texts, with Addenda and Corrigenda of Volumes 14), Simon Taylor with
Gilbert Mrkus (Shaun Tyas: Donington 2012), pp. 275-535.This is a useful resource
for many other parts of Scotland which share with Fife a similar linguistic history.
Note also short, well-informed articles by Alison Grant on individual place-name elements
both Gaelic and Scots in each issue of the free e-zine (electronic magazine!) The Bottle Imp
on: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/SWE/TBI/index.html

PLACE-NAME WALKS: These have been developed by the University of Glasgow, in

conjunction with Fife Council, Ochils Landscape Partnership and local history societies. For

full details, as well as pdfs of the accompanying booklets and hand-outs, see under Resources
on:
http://onomastics.co.uk/
This a website set up and managed by post-graduates at the University of Glasgow, and
contains other features immediately relevant to the study of both place- and personal names
(onomastics = the study of names).

PLACE-NAMES IN SCHOOLS: In 2013 Education Scotland in partnership with the

University of Glasgow developed a series of learning and teaching ideas based around
Scottish place-names for Levels Early to 4 (Primary 1 to Secondary 4). These can be found
on:
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/studyingscotland/resourcesforlearning/learning/Context
sforstudy/placenames/index.asp

SAINTS IN PLACE-NAMES: see HAGIOTOPONYMS, above.

SCOTLANDSPLACES: http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/
This describes itself as: a website that lets users search across different national databases
using geographic location. The user is able to enter a place name or a coordinate to search
across these collections or they can use the maps to both refine and define their search. The
results pages provide the data relevant to the search conducted, from each of the project
partners. These partners currently include: The Royal Commission on the Ancient and
Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS); The National Records of Scotland (NRS)
[formerly The National Archives of Scotland (NAS)] and The National Library of Scotland
(NLS).
It also contains details of all the county- and parish-boundary changes made in 1891.
It also has a subscription site which allows access to the digital images of all the
Ordnance Survey Name Books, with their descriptions and other notes on all 250,000 or so
place-names which appear on the OS 6 inch 1st edition maps. See under MAPS, Ordnance
Survey, above, for full details.
SCOTS
See the website of Scots Words and Place-names (SWAP)
www.gla.ac.uk/swap
This contains a Glossary of Scots Place-name Elements, as well as the facility for pupils and
teachers to send in examples of place-names which contain these words. (Co-ordinated by Dr
Alison Grant, Scottish Language Dictionaries and Scottish Place-Name Society).
An excellent Scots resource is the online Dictionary of the Scots Language/Dictionar o the
Scots Leid, an electronic edition amalgamating two earlier works, the Dictionary of the Older
Scottish Tongue (Scots up to c.1700) and the Scottish National Dictionary (Scots from
c.1700): http://www.dsl.ac.uk
For Scots in Scottish place-names, see also PLACE-NAME ELEMENTS, above.
SCOTTISH PLACE-NAME SOCIETY: http://www.spns.org.uk
This has a wide range of information on all aspects of Scottish place-names, alongside details
of conferences and other events. This is an important resource, with digital versions of several
PhDs on place-names, as well as extracts from the regularly up-dated bibliography of Scottish
place-name studies, including regional studies.

Warning: Most popular guides and dictionaries are written on the basis of unsound
methodology and information, and are best avoided. This includes almost any small,
one volume work covering the whole of Scotland. Two exceptions to this are: Alison
Grants The Pocket Guide to Scottish Place-Names (2010); and Maggie Scotts
Scottish Place Names (2008). A problematic example is J. B. Johnston, Place-Names
of Scotland (1934). It is often seriously off the mark when dealing with etymologies,
but it does contain early forms of names (though often not sourced). Furthermore
there are books and pamphlets about the place-names of most areas of Scotland.
While some are excellent, others are untrustworthy and misleading, especially the
older ones.
version March 2015