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

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.

Research of the sort proposed by the project may have impact at local and national level (its international dimension is primarily academic), and the project intends to engage in interactions beyond academia with a variety of sectors to ensure that the benefits are optimally available.

Our primary interface is with the local community, although the effects of this will feed in and through a variety of other sectors: local councils, NGOs, museums, schools, etc. Our work through the Knowledge Exchange Liaison Group will in itself create a network of relationships among academic researchers, local history societies, local councils, cultural institutions such as libraries, museums and community campuses, and schools. Exhibitions, workshops and talks will feature strongly. This will provide important benefits both for these institutions (through highlighting important aspects of the heritage of the localities) and for the research itself, through engaging new individuals and groups in the collection and research process. Community identity will be enhanced through this, and libraries and museums will have the benefit of new exhibitions tied into important aspects of local identity. It is clear that people find place-names a key matrix through which to explore their connection to local heritage. A witness to this is the thriving Scottish Place-Name Society, with 350+ members and turnouts of 100 at twice-yearly conferences. Both the CoI and the Chief Researcher are officers in the SPNS, and its networks will help ensure maximum national interaction.

Our work will also feed in to wider initiatives outwith the direct scope of this project. Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the body tasked with the maintenance and revitalisation of Scottish Gaelic, has a keen interest in solid data on place-names, feeding through the Aimnean-Àite na h-Alba partnership which they fund (AÀA's remit is to provide historically-based agreed modern Gaelic forms of Scottish place-names); and also in the employment of Gaelic place-name research to show the pervasive legacy of Gaelic in non-highland parts of Scotland. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, in partnership with National Archives of Scotland, has been pioneering an important new web-service 'Scotland's Places' (www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk), and we are in discussion with them regarding the longer-term upgrading of the Scottish Place-Name Database and integration into this new service. Our work on this current project will be designed in such a way as to be easily transferable into a new system when it is up and running, making for the widest possible access to scholarly data. We are aware that this means full online accessibility of our data must await developments outside this project, but we are committed to a single, national online database solution for Scotland's place-names, rather than the creation of multiple (and potentially incompatible) small-scale project-based ones. We see this longer-term vision as a strength.

We also envisage a longer-term engagement with bringing place-names into local communities. Members of the team are currently exploring knowledge transfer activities in relation to PNFife with Fife Council, and these will likely include guided walks based on place-name data (progressing to published guides) and study resources for primary and secondary schools. Márkus is already involved in creating walks of this sort for independent events in Falkland, Fife. We would hope to feed experiences from these activities into further developing the research from the proposed project, in particular in Kinross-shire, Clackmannanshire and the other surveyed areas. It is clear that one fruitful area of engagement will be primary and secondary education, and we will seek to develop the requisite links in our areas, and appropriate resources, so that we can engage w