Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland: essay prize
Recent winners
2021: Tristan Alphey (St Cross College, University of Oxford), Black and white agnomina in early medieval “England” [agnōmen means 'nickname’, 'byname’]
2020: Annika Ester Maresia (Jesus College, University of Oxford), Make it make sense: some considerations on rune-names and onomastics
2019: Emma Heywood (Glasgow) ‘Kinship marking’ in Anglo-Saxon personal names
2018: Katy Thompson Local history and cultural identity: a study of the street-names of St Andrews
2017: Erik Merriman Time gentlemen please! A toponymic investigation into the public houses of Manchester and their contribution to the linguistic landscape
2015: Robert Briggs Place-names in Old English tūn and ‘the long eighth century’
2013, 2014: no prize
2012 joint winners: Harriet Leslie (Glasgow) A study of the child-naming practices of the Scottish quakers between 1700 and 1825, and Eleanor Rye (Nottingham) A quantitative comparison of Scandinavian linguistic influences on the minor names of North Stainley and Nunwith (West Yorkshire) and Hurworth, Neasham and Sadberge (County Durham)
2011: Dr Gerry Smyth (Liverpool) Place-naming and space-knowing: an analysis of two Irish poems
2010: Rachael Hamilton (Glasgow) Names and meaning: a study of transparency in personal names
2008: Sheila Young (Aberdeen) Names of oil and gas fields in the central and northern sectors of the North Sea and part of the Atlantic margin
2005: Ellen Bramwell (Glasgow): An investigation into the community names of North Uist, Western Isles
2004: Jacob King (Edinburgh): A discussion of the derivation of ‘Lochy’ in Adomnan's ‘The Life of Saint Columba’
2002: Alison Grant (Glasgow): A new approach to inversion compounds in north-west England
1995: Linda Corrigan (Manchester): Old English and Scandinavian place-names of the Kendal barony in Westmorland
SNSBI Essay Prize – rules from 2022
A prize of £100 will be awarded annually for the best essay on any topic relating to the place-names and/or personal names of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Man or the Channel Islands.
Submissions are invited from all students and other researchers. The prize will normally be awarded to those who have not hitherto had work in onomastics published.
Essays should be about 5,000 words in length.
Essays should in some way make an original contribution to the subject.
Essays should be double- spaced, with pages numbered in a single sequence of arabic numerals, and should include a bibliography of source-material used and of books and authors cited.
Submissions should include an abstract of up to 250 words.
An anonymised electronic text of the essay and abstract should be submitted by October 31 each year to secretary at snsbi.org.uk (replace at by @).
Entries will be blind-refereed and the final decision made by a panel normally consisting of the President, the two Vice-Presidents and the Editor(s) of Nomina, who may consider it for publication.
Provided an essay of sufficient merit is forthcoming, the winner will be announced at the next AGM, held in the spring of the following year.