6.0098 XPosting from ANSAX: Place Names (1/43)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 22 Jun 1992 16:35:48 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0098. Monday, 22 Jun 1992.

Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1992 11:05 EST
From: Carol Bloomquist Traxler <CATRAXLER@GALLUA.BITNET>
Subject: English place-names

I thought HUMANIST readers would be interested in this posting sent over
ROOTS-L and ANSAXNET. Carol Traxler (Reply to Carole Ann Hough)

Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1992 12:14:23 BST
From: Carole_Ann_Hough@VME.NOTT.AC.UK
Subject: English Place-Names
...
I am working on a Leverhulme-funded research project at Nottingham
University, entitled "A Survey of the Language of English
Place-Names." The aim is to make the material published by the English
Place-Name Society computer-accessible by creating a database of
English place-names and place-name elements, and to use this database
to produce a new edition of English Place-Name Elements which will
replace the edition published in two volumes by A.H. Smith in 1956.
One of my main concerns is to present the material in a format
accessible not just to place-name scholars but to other people who use
place-name material, and to encourage people to use place-name
material if they are not already doing so. At the moment I am planning
the structure of the database and the format of the element entries,
and I shall be very grateful for comments and advice, particularly as
regards the following points:

a) How many people out there have used place-name material, and what
for?

b) How many people know and use Smith's edition of Elements? Which
features of this edition do you find particularly useful? Have you
experienced any difficulties in using it, and can you suggest any ways
in which the new edition could be made easier to use?

c) What format should the new edition of Elements take? (eg. should
headwords be given in Anglian or West Saxon; where an element is only
recorded in the dative, is it appropriate to invent a nominative to
use as the headword; should length-marks be included over vowels; how
much information should be given for each element; etc.)

d) Any other comments.

Thank you very much for your help.

Carole Hough
Centre for English Name Studies
University of Nottingham