November 7th, 2009, Saturday
Gaelic place-names between Campsies and Clyde
Peter Drummond
His talk was almost like a survey of the place-names found in this area. It was interesting to hear about the various language influences and how it affected the place-name development of the region. The presentation was well put forth and engaging and very interesting.
Sanda
Richard Cox
The small island Sanda was the focus of his talk. Quite interesting seeing how he worked through the linguistic influences of the time of what the name actually represents. There were a few questionable bits there that I am still mulling over especially regarding his ON höfn explanation.
Lost aber-name
Jake King
This was an interesting talk, however unfortunately, there isn't all that much that I remember from it to put in writing. My notes are also rather lacking in being helpful of the big picture. It did however have something to do with the place-name of Aberkarf!
Aspects of Pictish Phonolgy, the individual consonants: towards a phonology of Pictish
Guty Rhys
A discussion on where the evidence of Pictish is most likely to show up. His argument is that 'initial consonants are often more conservative than consonants placed elsewhere' and from this he has amassed a great lexicon of possibly accurate representation of pictish phonolgy. The problem with Guty is that although his material is interesting he gets caught up in sounding out all the various place-names and words he finds interesting without clearly explaining what is being respresented. His lists of words end up being a boring reiteration of them, when a few simple examples would have been enough.
Memories, meids and maps: recording Shetland place-names
Eileen Brook-Freeman
She came to tell us about a project that involved collecting all available information regarding the place-names on Shetland. It was very informative and interesting, not least since I am bilingual on the place-names and they even shed some light on my own language and understanding of old words. This is definitely a project I intend to follow.
POMS: Paradox of medieval Scotland
Dauvit Broun and Amanda Beam
Introducing the incredible database of 'social identities and interrelationships of individuals in Scottish medieval society'. In the database it is possible to find any and every person mentioned in medieval scottish documents. Quite impressive.
Place-names of Fife
Simon Taylor
Discussing his upcoming latest edition to the continuing publication of The Place-names of Fife, probably volume 3. Also quite impressive and incredibly well done.
Shetland ForWirds
Doreen Waugh
shetlanddialect.org.uk
shetlanddialect.co.uk
Introducing us to the project of preservation and promotion of the Shetland dialect.
Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
Carol Hough
Way to nerdy for me. A historical thesaurus of every and all english word arranged in the order of the date it was documented. Ouch!
All in all this was a very interesting day, and well worth attending. I must say that those lectures dealing specifically with place-names and the various languages and cultures affecting the area were the most interesting to me. Also the ones dealing with the Shetland dialect and place-names. But that's understandable since I am rather biased due to my background :)
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