Scottish Toponymy in Transition: Progressing County Surveys of the Place-Names of Scotland

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Scotland's place-names are among the richest resources for its linguistic and cultural past, yet they remain largely without detailed and systematic survey. The landmark five-volume Place-Names of Fife, by Simon Taylor with Gilbert Márkus (2006-11) brings new momentum to the survey of Scotland's place-names, which the present project aims to perpetuate. Moreover, it provides new paradigms and methodologies for the investigation and presentation of place-names. Moving from Fife to other counties, this project tests these methods, and provides a template for a full-scale, long-term county survey of Scotland. The project will complete and publish two full county surveys within the funded period, Kinross-shire (KNR) and Clackmannanshire (CLA). Both these counties are manageable, the pre-1975 counties having 5 parishes each (c.200 names per county). Each has had a substantial amount of research on its place-names already, chiefly by members of the project team. Investigating these two counties is not simply a matter of survey. Although both neighbour Fife to the west, each contains particular toponymic registers that do not precisely correspond with Fife. In investigating these counties, key questions must be posed, regarding the nature of toponymic localism, the border(s) of 'Pictish' and 'British', and the varied levels and chronology of Gaelicisation experienced in each region. As illustration, a notable series of place-names containing the habitative element gart 'enclosed field; clearing' exists in CLA, but these names stop more or less abruptly at the border of Fife. Conversely, although Fife contains an abundance of place-names employing the important element pett 'portion of an estate', these are not to be found in the historical core of KNR and only three minor names of this sort survive in CLA. These examples suggest that different factors are at play in the toponymy of central Scotland as one heads west from Fife, and this project will address these differences. The production of these two county surveys will be conducted alongside work on other counties, in distinct regions: Menteith in historical Perthshire, Cunninghame in Ayrshire and Berwickshire in the Borders. The project team brings key expertise to each of these, making them natural areas to progress to. Menteith in particular is well advanced, allowing preparation of 1 volume of a projected 2. Although the outputs from these areas will not include full survey publication, work will be informed and advanced significantly by progressing in tandem with the completion of two new counties. This process will allow methodological issues to be addressed so as to ensure applicability across a greater range of linguistic, political, and data-source contexts. Key research questions within this methodological portion of the project relate to historical and linguistic approaches in both analysis and presentation; and the effect of varied sources and date-horizons on the presentation of survey data.The project also aims to provide a new paradigm of public engagement with place-names. A series of exchanges in talks and library exhibitions, organised in collaboration with local history societies and local councils, will enhance the researchers' understanding of and access to place-names, and enrich the public's awareness of and relation to their local environment and its linguistic landscape. By the project-end, survey of Scotland's rich and complex place-name legacy will have been significantly advanced. Two full counties will have been surveyed, and three new counties set on the road to completion, the templates and infrastructure for further surveys will have been developed, key issues of methodology and approach established, and new insights into the complexities of the toponyms gained. It will have cemented and built on the insights gained over the past two decades in Scottish onomastics, and consolidated the research base of place-name studies in Scotland.