The Society's second AGM was held at St Andrews College, Bearsden, Glasgow on 2 May this year and was attended by around 40 people. It co-incided with the Society's fourth day conference.
Vice-Convenor, Doreen Waugh, opened proceedings by welcoming all present, some of whom had travelled from as far afield as Copenhagen and London to be there. She also thanked Carole Hough for having done much of the work of organising the day and the venue.
Committee: The office-bearers remain the same. Three Committee Members stood down: Dauvit
Broun, Graham Ciae and Barbara Crawford. The Convenor thanked them warmly for their
contribution to the Society in its infancy. All three will remain closely involved in the work of the
Society in various ways, above all in relation to the Scottish Place-Name Database Project. Two
new Committee members were elected: Peadar Morgan, Director of Comann Luchd-Ionnsachaidh
[CLI] (for learners and supporters of Scots Gaelic) and editor of Cothrom, CLI's bilingual
quarterly; and David Munro, Director of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. The Committee
now consists of:
Ian Fraser (Convenor)
Doreen Waugh (Vice-Convenor and Secretary)
Carole Hough (Treasurer)
Simon Taylor (Newsletter Editor)
Maggie Mackay (Carnegie Place-Name Database Project Liaison)
Peadar Morgan
David Munro
Morag Redford
The Treasurer reported that the 1997-98 accounts show a healthy balance of £1,553,19. The largely reflects membership payments from the Society's 260 members, as well as some donations kindly received from members. The Treasurer did, however, note that the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews had borne the costs of producing and distributing the first 3 Newsletters as gestures of goodwill towards the Society. The Society itself had borne the cost of the recently distributed Newsletter no.4.
The Newsletter Editor repeated his message to last year's AGM, to the effect that the increasing interest in and high-quality debate, research and writing on Scottish place-names more than warrant the production of a Scottish place-name journal. He hopes, therefore, to put together a proposal to bring to next year's AGM for the launching of such a journal under the auspices of the Society in the year 2000. In the meantime, the Newsletter will continue to appear twice-yearly.
Full minutes of the AGM will be available before the business meeting at next year's AGM. Anyone wanting to see them beforehand, please send a stamped addressed envelope to the Secretary, Dr Doreen Waugh, 7 Barnton Gardens, Edinburgh EH4 6AF.
The Conference itself was brimming with papers and reports, summaries of which now follow:
MONKLAND PLACE-NAMES
Peter Drummond, Airdrie, spoke of the research he had done for his booklet of the same title,
stressing the importance of linguistic context and early forms for each name, the assistance given
by occurrences of similar names elsewhere, and the theoretical and practical help given by books
like W.F.H. Nicolaisen's Scottish Place-Names (1976) and by professionals like Ian Fraser.
The Monklands is no more; the area researched in the 1980s was swallowed up into North
Lanarkshire in the 1990s. It includes Airdrie, a Gaelic name (there are 3 other Airdries in
Scotland) and means either ard ruighe 'height of (the) slope' or ard àirighe 'height of (the) sheiling',
both of which would apply, especially the former, describing the slope down from the Slamannan
plateau, a reminder of how important it is to fit a name into its landscape-context. Being Gaelic
Airdrie represents c.25% of the area's names. Most of the others are Scots, with no Norse, Pictish
or Anglian names, and only a tiny number of Cumbric ones, like Papperthill. Hence the suggestion
is unlikely that 'Airdrie' is Cumbric, containing as its second element Cumbric tref 'farm-stead'.
Contextual clues also apply to the attempt to find the meaning of Coatbridge, first recorded in
1750. Research has shown that from the 13th century the land was owned by the Colt family,
sometimes known as Coats, and the estate generated place-names such as Coatdyke, Coathill,
Coatbank and Nether and Over Coats (!). So Coatbridge was simply the bridge on the Coats estate.
Other points touched on included the fact that Gaelic names here appear to be the southern limit
of the Central Belt's Gaelic, since much of Lanarkshire southwards has very few; that Gart- ('farm,
enclosure for arable') names (e.g. Gartsherrie) are very numerous; that Drum-names are regularly
applied to low hills right across the Central Belt; and that the area's farm-names, extant and
extinct, are a rich vein of Scots names (e.g. Auldshiels, Palacerigg, One's Mailling, Townhead and
Laverock Knowe). He also gave example of myths about local names: Bargeddie, a village on the
banks of the Monklands Canal, is not for example named after a bargee named Edward, but comes
from earlier Balgaddeis (1587). Balgedy (1654), Gaelic baile 'farm' + gead 'strip of arable land',
and coined long before there was a canal.
He concluded by looking at spoken, unmapped names, like the long-gone tram terminus in Airdrie
still known as 'The Terminus'. Monklands, a former mining and industrial area, had many of these
spoken names, such as pits called The Hard Egg, The Wee Jean, and the Hoor in the Park
(respectively for the nature of the rock, the intemperate foreman's virago wife, and the improper
name of the colliery officially known as 'Lady Anne', properly named after the wife of Sir John
Wilson!)
FOOTNOTE: Monklands, a medieval parish now split into Old and New Monklands, has been the subject of more toponymic interest than many other parts of Scotland, since in the last 11 years there have been two books published on its place-names. Firstly there is Peter Drummond's own book Placenames of The Monklands (Monklands 1987). Secondly there is Stephen McCabe's An Etymological Guide to the Placenames of the Monklands (Nivelles, Belgium 1992). Anyone interested in both or either of these books, please write to the Newsletter Editor.
SOME THOUGHTS ON PLACE-NAMES IN WEST PERTHSHIRE
A. McGregor (Greg) Hutcheson, Collace, Perthshire gave a paper with this title, which included
a recording of one of the last native speakers of Gaelic from Balquhidder. The full text of his
paper will appear in the next issue of Cothrom (no.17) entitled 'Dusan Dlòcan sa Chàrn / A
Dozen Dlòcans in the Sledge' (pp11-14). In the same issue is also an article by Neil MacGregor
on Strathspey, 'Fo Sgàil a' Chàirn Ghuirm / In the Shadow of Cairngorm' (pp.28-32), which
includes much toponymic material.
Individual issues of Cothrom cost £3, and are available from CLI, 62 High Street, Invergordon,
Ross-shire IV18 0DH Tel./Fax 01349 854848.
THE TRUMPETERS OF BEMERSYDE:
AN OLD ENGLISH PLACE-NAME ELEMENT RECONSIDERED
(N.B. the html font refused to recognise certain accents in the original text, therefore in the following "bemere" should always be read with a flat first "e", "side" with flat "i", "beam", "beme" and "beo" all with flat "e", and "rare-dum(b)la" with flat first "a")
Carole Hough, Glasgow: The place-name Bemersyde in Berwickshire is a compound of OE
bemere, generally taken to mean `trumpeter', and OE side `hillside' or `seat' (Johnston 1934 and
1940; Williamson 1942). This paper reconsiders the range of meaning of OE bemere in order to
illustrate the contribution that place-names make to our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary
and the history of the language.
OE bemere (West Saxon form býmere) also occurs as the first element of the English place-names
Bemerhills, Bemerton and Bemerehill in Wiltshire, Bemersley in Staffordshire, and Bemerherste in
Middlesex, and in a Wiltshire boundary marker to bymera cumbe. These are traditionally
interpreted as `hill of the trumpeters', `farm of the trumpeters', `clearing of the trumpeter', and
`valley of the trumpeters'. It would appear from this evidence that the trumpet was a popular
instrument in Anglo-Saxon times, generally played out of doors. However, other sources (history,
literature and archaeology) present a weight of negative evidence that makes it unlikely that these
place-names refer to trumpeters in a literal sense.
As in Modern English, many Old English words were polysemous, developing extended or
alternative meanings in different contexts. Whereas one meaning may be represented in literary
sources, another is often preserved in toponyms. One area of vocabulary represented more fully in
the place-name corpus than in the extant literature is that of the common names given to birds and
animals in the Anglo-Saxon vernacular. I suggest that OE bemere should be understood in a
transferred sense to designate a type of bird with a trumpet-like voice. Since bird-names often
combine with topographical generics, the interpretation is plausible in the place-name contexts.
The call of the male bittern is known in Modern English as a boom. The same word is used of the
buzzing of bees or beetles, but its etymology is unknown. I suggest that it may descend from the
same origins as the homonym boom `a long spar', which is related to OE beam `wood' as well as
to cognates in other Germanic languages. OE beme `trumpet' is also etymologically related to OE
bam, used in the sense of `something made of wood, a wooden trumpet'. A link in the chain may
be provided by the use of the word beming to refer to the buzzing of bees in the work of the
early-sixteenth-century Scots poet Douglas. There is clearly a connection between this and the use
of bum, the Scottish equivalent of boom, to refer to the hum of bees in present-day usage. I
suggest that the use of the word beming in Douglas' writing makes it possible to trace the
derivation of boom or bum back to OE beme `trumpet'.
If my proposal of an etymological link with ModE boom is correct, OE bemere may represent
either a bird-name or an alternative word for a bee. Three of the place-name generics found in
combination with OE bemere also occur in combination with OE beo `bee' in English place-names,
while other references to vallies frequented by bees occur in Beeslack, Midlothian, and Beecraigs,
West Lothian (MacDonald 1941). Bemerton and Bemersyde might designate places noted for the
production of honey, an interpretation supported by comparison with the Berwickshire Milchesid
(1189), explained by Williamson (1942) as `hillside of rich pasture, which produced a good yield
of milk'.
However, I think it more likely that OE bemere refers to a type of bird. OE beo is well
represented both in place-names and in literature, so there is no apparent reason for an alternative
word for a bee to be used in toponyms. The term rare-dum(b)la `bittern', on the other hand, is
recorded only rarely in Old or Middle English, mostly in glossaries, and occurs neither in English
nor in Scottish place-names. A different name may therefore be postulated for demotic use. A
useful research tool is A Thesaurus of Old English (Roberts and Kay, 1995), where the grouping
of the material by subject makes it possible to identify gaps in the known vocabulary of Old
English. There are many gaps in the areas of bird- and animal-names, reflecting a bias in literary
sources towards unusual and exotic creatures rather than farmyard animals and indigenous fauna.
Most significantly, there is no common term for a bittern in the literary corpus of Old English. One
must have existed, and it is reasonable to turn to place-name evidence in an attempt to supply the
deficiency. The French loan-word bittern is not recorded in English before the fourteenth century,
and may have replaced an OE bemere, býmere, the etymon of ModE boomer, which is still in use
as an alternative name for the bittern (Jackson 1968). The place-name Bemersyde, with its English
cousins, may provide the link that enables this etymology to be established.
Note
A more detailed discussion of the English place-names referred to in this paper will appear in C.
Hough, `Place-name evidence for Old English bird-names', Journal of the English Place-Name
Society (forthcoming, 1998).
References
Craigie, W. A., A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue From the Twelfth Century to the End
of the Seventeenth (Chicago and London, 1937+).
Jackson, C. E., British Names of Birds (London, 1968).
Johnston, J. B., The Place-Names of Berwickshire (Edinburgh, 1940).
Johnston, J. B., Place-Names of Scotland, 3rd edn (London, 1934).
MacDonald, A., The Place-Names of West Lothian (Edinburgh, 1941).
Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1989).
Roberts, J. and C. Kay with L. Grundy, A Thesaurus of Old English, 2 vols (London, 1995).
Williamson, M. G., The Non-Celtic Place-Names of the Scottish Border Counties, unpublished
PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1942.
WESTER KITTOCHSIDE: THE MICROTOPONYMY OF A LANARKSHIRE ESTATE
Simon Taylor, St Andrews: In January of this year the Edinburgh firm of John Renshaw
Architects won the tender to the National Trust of Scotland for a historic buildings and landscape
survey of Wester Kittochside Farm in East Kilbride parish, Lanarkshire. The NTS, in partnership
with the National Museums of Scotland, plans to develop the farm-house, steading and lands of
Wester Kittochside for a new National Museum of Scottish Country Life, which at the moment is
housed at Ingliston by Edinburgh. The aim of the architect's survey is to present the NTS with a
detailed inventory of the estate, since the estate itself would be not only the framework of the
museum, but the chief exhibit. With admirable enlightenment, the architects decided to include a
toponymic survey of the estate as part of their tender, and with equal enlightenment the NTS
accepted the tender. The speaker was seconded from the St Andrews Scottish Studies Institute for
a few days to carry this out.
The talk began with a brief history of the lands of Kittochside. The estate now known as Wester
Kittochside in fact forms only about a sixth of the original lands of Kittochside, these lands being
divided into East and West Kittochside in the 14th century. Wester Kitochside was only part of
the western half of Kittochside, most of which had been acquired by the Reid family by the 17th
century. In the second half of the 18th century, one branch of the Reid family built the present
house and steadings now known as Wester Kittochside, and it remained in their possession until
1992, when they gifted it to the National Trust.
The estate takes its name from the Kittoch Water, a tributory of the White Cart and, whatever the
derivation of 'Kittoch' (no doubt Celtic), 'Kittochside' must be considered a Scots name, and
cannot have been coined before around 1200, when Scots was first introduced into the area. In
fact within the lands of Kittochside every name so far identified derives from Scots, as do many of
the surrounding farms, such as Philpshill, Highflat and Rogerton, suggesting that settlement in this
area during the centuries when Cumbric (till c.1000) and Gaelic (till c.1200) was spoken in
Lanarkshire was extremely sparse.
A rough definition of the 'microtoponymy' of the title might be 'the place-nomenclature which
never makes it on to the Ordnance Survey maps', thus field-names and other minor names known
only in the immediate locality. In the case of Wester Kittochside, these were mainly derived from a
1858 estate plan, which contain such field-names as The Short Croft and the Long Croft
(indicating old Infield); Queys Park (containing Scots quey 'heiffer'); Stockcraigs (Scots stock
'tree-stump' or 'trunk') and the unexplained Fauselands (?Scots fause 'false, deceitful).
ISLE OF MULL: Placenames, Meanings and Stories
This is the title of a new book by Society member Charles Maclean which he presented to the
Conference. It is well-produced, with excellent black-and-white photographs, representing a long
labour of love on the part of the author, whose family roots run deep into the Island. It claims to
be a comprehensive list of all Mull place-names, both mapped and unmapped, and I defy anyone
to disprove this, since it contains literally thousands of names, each one usefully provided with a
6-figure O.S. grid reference. To quote from Mr Maclean himself:
"This book contains all the mapped and many unmapped placenames throughout the Island of
Mull, together with their meanings. There are also many stories of why some of these places were
given their names. It consists of 170 pages, size A4, packed with these names...
It is divided into five chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of the countryside e.g.
Settlement Names and Hydronymy, plus an additional chapter on unmapped names."
ISLE OF MULL: Placenames, Meanings and Stories, C. Maclean (Dumfries 1997). The price is
£10 (+ £2.95 p. & p. in UK). [Since Mr Maclean's death, this is now available at www.mullplacenames.co.uk]
GERMANIC ELEMENTS IN SCOTTISH PLACE-NAMES
At the day conference and AGM of the Society this year, Maggie Scott gave the following outline
of her PhD at Glasgow University.
The working title for my thesis is Germanic Elements in Scottish Place-Names, and its aim is to
examine the contribution of Scottish place-names to the lexicon of Old English, Middle English
and Old Norse.
It has been demonstrated by scholars such as Ann Cole, Carole Hough and Margaret Gelling, that
English place-names are a valuable source of evidence for the early history of the language. The
work of these scholars has far-reaching implications for Scotland, and there is now a need for
Scottish place-names to be re-interpreted in the light of their discoveries.
The surveys of individual areas of Scotland conducted by N. Dixon, A. Macdonald and M.
Williamson, and more recently by S. Taylor, and the archives of the Scottish Place-Name Survey,
provide much material which relates to the place-names of Scotland. I am currently extracting
relevant information from these valuable resources in order to assemble a corpus of the non-Celtic
vocabulary which has so far been identified in the place-names of Scotland.
The earlier studies continue to provide raw material which can be used for further research, but
some of the interpretations they contain now require updating, particularly in the light of the
recent work on English place-name elements. I intend to address this problem by undertaking a
systematic study of the Germanic vocabulary so far identified in Scottish place-names, using the
full range of comparative evidence available to elicit an up-to-date interpretation for the names.
My study will be primarily concerned with the place-names of Southern Scotland, because of the
linguistic stratification of this area. In the north of Scotland, many of the ON names represent
areas of primary Scandinavian settlement, and therefore deserve separate consideration.
Once I have assembled the corpus of the non-Celtic vocabulary of the place-names of Scotland, I
will then proceed to a detailed examination of the usage and range of meaning of each place-name
term, using linguistic and topographical evidence as well as comparative material from English and
Continental place-names and from literary sources.
Particular attention will be paid to the following:
a)Terminology unattested or of low incidence in the literary corpus, for which place-name
evidence is therefore of unique importance. For example, the substantive use of OE græg, is not
recorded in the written sources but in certain place-names græg has been identified as meaning 'a
grey animal'. This element was usually taken to mean 'badger', based on the usage of grey in the
fifteenth century. However, in 1995, a study based on detailed analysis of the place-name evidence
from England suggested that 'wolf' is a more likely interpretation of græg than 'badger'. OE græg
also appears in Scottish place-names, for example Milne Graden in Coldstream parish ROX, and
Scottish evidence may prove decisive in our conclusions about the range of meaning of this element.
b)Terminology of uncertain application in English place-names, for which the Scottish evidence
may prove crucial for interpretation. For example, the ON element almenn 'everybody' may occur
in Almondbury in the West Riding of Yorkshire. However, this is far from certain. There are
several Scottish names which may or may not support this interpretation, and may lead to firmer
conclusions about the possible uses of almenn in the place-name corpus of the British Isles.
c)Terminology unrepresented in English place-names, for which the Scottish evidence is again
particularly important. For example, Fiddler's Croft in Linlithgow, West Lothian, is likely to
contain OE fiþele, which is not recorded in Smith's English Place-Name Elements.
d)Terminology whose range of application in English place-names or in the literary corpus has
recently been subject to revision. The studies mentioned by Cole, Gelling and others have resulted
in a fundamental reassessment of the significance of a number of place-name terms; while similarly
the fascicles published to date of the Toronto Dictionary of Old English and the Ann Arbor
Middle English Dictionary (Kurath and Kuhn) have identified words and meanings that were
unknown to earlier scholars. In 1982 Cole examined the uses of OE denu, meaning 'a valley', and
she concluded that denu was generally used to describe valleys which were long, narrow and
steep-sided. It would therefore be interesting to re-examine the many occurrences of denu in
Scottish place-names, in the light of this more specific definition.
e)Terminology recorded in place-names earlier than in the literature. In Dixon's thesis, the first
element of Restalrig MLO is explained as the dialectal word lestal 'mire', and, if correct, its usage
in this place-name predates its use in literature by four hundred years. This kind of etymological
investigation can uncover a vast amount of information concerning the early history of our
language, and the Scottish evidence may prove crucial for the interpretation of the elements which
fall into all of these categories.
Following the conference, I received several informative and enthusiastic communications from
members of the Society. Angus Watson and W. W. Gould both drew my attention to the existence
of another name containing OE fiþele, and Peter Drummond had some interesting comments to
make on the subject of Scottish hill names. I would like to thank them, and other members for
their valuable correspondences and encouragement, which is much appreciated by this raw
postgraduate student.
THE HISTORICAL THESAURUS OF ENGLISH AS A TOOL FOR PLACE-NAME RESEARCH
Christian J. Kay, Department of English Language, University of Glasgow, gave a short
report on The Historical Thesaurus of English, a conceptually organised dictionary of the
vocabulary of English from Old English to the modern period. Words are collected from the
Oxford English Dictionary and from Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, then arranged in semantic
categories, moving from very general concepts such as Emotions or the Universe to specific ones
such as individual feelings or names for parts of the landscape.
The primary purpose of the Thesaurus, which was started by Professor M.L. Samuels in 1965, is
to supply data for historians of English interested in semantic change. However, the nearer we
come to completion, the more it becomes apparent that our data will also be useful to scholars in
other fields, such as Onomastics. Most obviously, the onomast in search of an etymology may find
inspiration in the lists of synonyms for particular concepts which the Thesaurus contains. Thus, the
user who looks up the 34 words currently listed under Promontory, point of land will find entries
such as OE gara, hoh, nose, and sceat, which form part of the common wordstock of English and
Scots, as well as the more familiar ness, head and horn. All of these words occur as place-name
elements, as for instance hoh does in the Borders names of Kelso, Minto, Fogo and Pittlesheugh,
or sceat in Aldershot and Bagshot.. Seeing the possibilities collected together in this way may be
suggestive in cases where the etymology is unclear.
As my colleague Carole Hough showed in 'The Trumpeters of Bemersyde' (see above), the link
between Onomastics and Lexicography is by no means one-way. The extant corpus of OE is
skewed towards literary texts; our knowledge of the everyday spoken language of the
Anglo-Saxons is much more limited. This deficiency can sometimes be remedied by onomastic
evidence, since place-names are likely to derive from colloquial language. Thus to our list of OE
words under Hill we were able to add words such as canc, clacc, clop, cnyll, pamp and peac on
the basis of place-name evidence.
A separate thesaurus of OE has already been published, and is particularly relevant to those
working on the Germanic place-names of Scotland. Fruitful sections for onomastic research
include plant and animal names, farming, dwellings, and the supernatural. Although the parent
project will not be completed until after 2000, we are always willing to supply scholars with
available data in either electronic or paper format. A list of categories and further information can
be found on our Web site, http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/EngLang/thesaur/homepage.htm.
Jane Roberts and Christian Kay with Lynne Grundy, A Thesaurus of Old English, King's College
London Medieval Studies XI, 1995, 2 vols., xxxv + 1555, ISBN 0 952211904.
BEARSDEN TO CALIFORNIA, VIA EUROCENTRAL !
Under this 'geographically challenged' title, Glasgow-based SPNSociety member Andrew Currie
then made a short report on an aspect of the toponymic work he has been doing over the years.
Given the focus and locus of this conference, he took a broad sweep through the heavily
urbanized heartland of West-Central Scotland, peeling back the post-industrial mask to illustrate
some typical etymological complexities of the many modern place names of this region.
From his professional cartographic background Andrew likened this group of youngest names to
the uppermost typographic layer of a map, and thus having the ease of access and familiarity of
contemporary language. However his recent research has emphasized the importance of not
making light of our 'modern names' but applying a full painstaking scrutiny.
To support his contention, Andrew cited such examples as: Bearsden, originating as a whimscical
reference to an 18th-c. boyhood lair, transferring to a local gamekeeper's cottage, and then only in
1863 adopted by a nearby new railway station that eventually through common usage was to label
the growing suburb; Clydebank, with three earlier 19th-c. Clydeside locations/functions before its
current domain; Mountblow, like Mount Vernon, having 18th-c. 'tobacco lord' origins;
Anniesland, first mapped in 1791 but still obscure; Maryhill, the 18th-c. exception to Glasgow's
many 'real hills'; The Hielandman's Umbrella The Barras and The Butney, of late oral tradition;
Grahamstown, a lost 18th-c. suburb name; California, an ex-mining village near Falkirk, that like
US Gold Rush towns grew overnight and in 1885 was at first simply 'the place up the Braes'!
PS Eurocentral (c.1997ad) may be Scotland's youngest place name of all! Denoting a major new
manufacturing complex in North Lanarkshire, this latest signposted addition to our national
toponymic map clearly emanates from the mindset of the enterprise zone culture whose mission
statement is more to do with promoting inward investment than etymological function or
geographical sense! However, the $64K question Andrew asked is ... will it stick?
PLACE-NAMES IN EAST LOTHIAN
William Patterson from East Linton gave a short report on his work in East Lothian, which
suggests a stronger Gaelic stratum than has hitherto been recognised. More on this in the next
issue of the Newsletter.
WESTER ROSS DEVELOPMENTS
Although not able to attend in person, the Conference heard a report from Society member Roy
Wentworth (speaker at last May's AGM Conference). Scottish Natural Heritage have
commissioned him to do a thorough toponymic survey of the Beinn Eighe and the Loch Maree
Islands National Nature Reserves. This signals SNH's interest not only in the preservation of the
natural world, but also in the cultural heritage of landscapes under their care, and sets an excellent
example for those bodies whose prime responsibility is that of cultural heritage. As reserve
manager David Miller said, it is also a matter of relating the present condition of the land to its use
and management in the past, about which many clues are given in place-names. More details of the
project can be found in Roddy Maclean's article 'Recording the rich heritage of the Ross-shire
Hills',Ross-shire Journal 20.3.98.
WESTER ROSS ADDENDUM
Both Roy Wentworth's studies are now complete, and are a model of meticulous toponymic
scholarship. The Beinn Eighe study resulted in 240 names and alternative name-forms, many
collected from local Gaelic-speakers, written up under 161 main name entries. This contrasts with
the 80 names recorded for this area by the O.S. 1:10 000.
SNH will publish both studies: Place-Names of the Loch Maree Islands National Nature Reserve
(140 pages) and Place-Names of Beinn Eighe NNR (480 pages). Costs still be decided. For more
information, contact Scottish Natural Heritage, 12 Hope Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 2AS.
All in all the Conference was bursting at the seams with interesting and varied talks and reports!