No known human society, past or present, has failed to apply names to its people or its significant places. That means they play a central part in everyone’s life, and are of special interest to anyone interested in the history and structure of societies and cultures. In modern written English we signal the special status of names by writing them with a capital letter. Many names, including most place-names in Britain and Ireland, and surnames, were meaningful when they were coined, in that they used the vocabulary and grammar of one of the islands’ languages. In becoming names they change their function from communicating linguistic meaning to labelling, but studying them can tell us about the ebb and flow of languages in a region, and the peoples who spoke them. Interpreting these names can also give us insights into the coiners’ perceptions of landscape, agriculture, industry and each other. Other names, like many forenames used in Britain and Ireland today, are not transparently meaningful when they are given (for example, in naming a child), but can still tell us about family relationships and cultural influences.
In everyday use all names perform essential duties in identifying and addressing people and picking out individual people or places, all for the most part in a special way: doing these jobs modestly and efficiently without reliance on the meanings of the words and structures that once made them up. That makes names in general linguistically unique and special. How could anyone not be interested in these cornerstones of our lives, and in their extension to pets, ships, houses, clubs, businesses, brands, characters in literature and computer games, stars, planets, supernatural beings …?
© Richard Coates