The value of names as evidence for the currency and use of English words has long been recognized, as shown by the numerous papers on the subject published in journals such as Nomina and by the steady increase in quantity of onomastic material cited in this capacity in the OED as revision progresses. However, names also play another important role in the history of the lexicon, one which has generally received less academic attention. This paper is intended to go a small way towards redressing the balance by taking as its subject matter OED entries in which names function not as evidence for English words, but as their etymons. The Dictionary today contains well over 9,000 words derived from proper names: names of settlements, regions, streets, buildings, rivers, and countries; names of companies and brands; and first names and surnames of individuals, both real and fictional. In line with my personal interests and with the focus of the SNSBI, I will look in detail at a small set of words etymologized from names of places in Britain and Ireland, aiming to illustrate the range of circumstances in which a place-name can give rise to an English word, to showcase the kind of research that goes into writing these entries, and to discuss some of the more unexpected linguistic implications of this type of lexical item.

One of the best ways to unite a people is to hold a common name, even when a fixed territory with hard boundaries becomes lost, conquered, or obscured. Names that denote a sense of belonging appear all over England, Wales, and Scotland, dating from the fifth to the tenth centuries, and can be used to investigate and map little kingdoms. Wessex, Northumbria, and Mercia are all 'Early Medieval big names’ - kingdoms nearly everyone has heard of - but there are many other, smaller, more ephemeral polities. *Basingas, *Sunningas, or the Brahingas, maybe even the *Bilheardingas preserved only in one runic inscription, for example. The -ingas- element denotes 'kin’ or 'followers of’ an ancestor, but half the time can these ancestors - these names - even be verified? Was the desire to create a common name and shared identity enough to warrant the invention of fictional ancestral figures? A handful of these names, and other parallels from Wales and Scotland, will be introduced and assessed using the case studies of a few micro-polities and relevant archaeological information. This paper first and foremost seeks to identify these obscured and lesser-known 'kingdoms’ via the use of toponymy. A handful of such kingdoms will be introduced and explored in an almanac fashion, highlighting some particularly unique naming conventions across the British Isles, and where possible, the ancestral figures that they relate to. Some examples include Rheinwg, in Wales, the territory of the Brahingas near Essex, the roaming Haliwerfolcland, or the Haestingas (Hastings), and the role these names played in consolidating and cementing group identities in such a turbulent period of time.’

The sacred can break through the landscape wherever folk-etymology allows it: burnt ground is transformed from sanget to St John and elder trees from elne to St Helen. Such innovations are created through hagiologising forms of etymologically secular place-names. Though some of these were purely verbal tics with no conscious religion, others inspired real devotion. St Oswald was the making of Oswestry, even if he never went there, and St Everildis had a cult at Everingham though she may not have existed at all. A holy history for England was stitched together when readers of Bede discovered his heroes everywhere in etymologically invalid dedications to Chad and Wilfred. Mislocated saints, and even spurious saints like Aldate and Athan, were produced by the same respect for tradition which perpetuated real dedications in the face of imposed forgetfulness. From the fourteenth century, native patrons were conjured up from place-names in Cornwall to defy the English; in the eighteenth century it was happening everywhere to resist the saintlessness of Puritanism. Churches, like houses, need a name and even if this was arbitrarily taken from a nearby field, it provided identity. Dedications assumed from feudal affixes watched over landowners, while renamed hills, bridges, roads and wells gave a focus for prayers in the landscape. Hagiologising forms are cults in the making, not just mistakes in transmission. Though St Ivel had no devotees outside the marketing board of the cheese industry, his manufacture from a Somerset river-name points a moral: local saints for local people.

This research focuses on the effect of decolonisation on street nomenclature and the postcolonial street naming conventions in former colonies. Street names evidence local and national historical narratives and as Azaryahu points out, their utility ‘for commemorative purposes is instrumental in transforming the urban environment into a virtual political setting’ (1996: 311). It is therefore unsurprising that street names and their resulting political symbolism have influenced collective societal decisions regarding what should be named and publicly acknowledged, both in Britain and across the world. Taking the cases of Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata, this paper studies trends in the street renaming patterns in these three historically significant cities of India, and explores the innovative ways in which they have created their postcolonial identities and commemorative tendencies. The research was funded as a vacation project by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and was carried out between May and August 2024. Data on street names was gathered from Google maps, Wikipedia and online articles, and analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. A small-scale survey was also conducted to study residents’ responses to street renaming. Results of this research demonstrate the creative decision-making that went into reimagining the street nomenclature of the three cities and what can be deduced about its overall sociopolitical implications. Data from survey results exhibit the extent to which people have responded to decolonisation initiatives in Kolkata and Bangalore, and suggestions for better integration and improvement offered by them. This research is significant because it exemplifies how advantageous the study of toponymy can be to the conduct of research on the intricate yet ingenious correlation between street names and postcolonial identities, and also initiates discussions on how residents could be encouraged to actively use these new names and share in the work of nation-building. Reference: Azaryahu, Maoz. 1996. ‘The Power of Commemorative Street Names’ in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14(3), pp. 311-330.

It is rarely possible to trace the naming of inter-town roads over many centuries. This is unfortunate as such road-names often gives clues to the function of roads in the medieval economy. This talk will look at innovatory changes in the naming of a very special case of a major East Anglian road, that from Ipswich to Norwich (more precisely Coddenham to Caistor St Edmund, the Roman road Margary 3d). Starting about 1300, it is found as le Rodewey and le Rode. Later it became the Pye Road, and in the twentieth century it finally acquired its least-interesting name, A140. The use here of le Rode (meaning 'the riding-way’) antedates the record under OED road (first noticed in 1580) by about 300 years. Moreover, the name Pye Road is from an inn, itself called a Rodehouse in early records (first in 1383; cf. OED roadhouse only from 1806), pointing to its function as a traveller's stopping-place. This talk will explore the implications of these observations for our knowledge of the medieval road system. References: Briggs 2018, The etymology of ‘road’; Briggs 2019, Middle English rōde ‘a ride’ and its compounds; Briggs forthcoming (2025?), The place-names of Suffolk.

Surnames die, and previous work has estimated that over two-thirds of English surnames have been lost since 1350 (Sturges & Hagget, 1987; Plant & Plant, 2017). The mathematical focus of these previous studies has meant that possible socio-onomastic aspects of this pattern have not been addressed, and while chance may have some bearing on which names survive and which do not, the socio-onomastic question of “why some names are avoided” (Ainiala & Östman, 2017, p. 2) also seems relevant to this issue. This paper will present some initial findings of what is ultimately intended as a more detailed research project on the patterns of surname frequency reduction and surname death, looking at why some surnames die and others do not. By looking at broad patterns in frequency data, and comparing surnames with English vocabulary, some suggestions will be made, and some figures presented, in an effort to draw attention to this topic of socio-onomastic interest, showing that some frequency changes appear not to be random, and so some sort of change and innovation in our naming practices may have a part to play. Possible theoretical implications will also be raised, with the possibility that this kind of investigation can contribute to the debate on the extent to which the onomasticon and lexicon are made up of different kinds of linguistic data which are not directly comparable. References: Ainiala, T. & Östman, J. (2017). Introduction: Socio-onomastics and pragmatics. In T. Ainiala & J. Östman (Eds.), Socio-onomastics: The pragmatics of names (pp. 1–18). John Benjamins; Plant, J. S. & Plant, R. E. (2017). Inheritance of English surnames by Sturges and Haggett, review and explanations. Journal of One-Name Studies 12(12), 13–15; Sturges, C. M. & Haggett, B. C. (1987). Inheritance of English Surnames. Hawgood Computing.