SNSBI Spring Conference 2026
The spring conference conference of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland was held 27-29 March 2026 in the historic Guildhall in Bury St Edmunds.
The conference started after dinner on Friday evening with a keynote lecture by Mark Bailey. On Sunday afternoon, there was a coach trip, including Long Melford, Melford Hall, and Lavenham.
Programme
Friday 27 March
1930-2100 Mark Bailey (UEA): The estates of Bury St Edmunds abbey 1250 to 1450
Saturday 28 March
0915-1100 session 1 Early England
0930-1000 Rob Briggs: A long overdue catch-up? Recent work in archaeology and history concerning the fifth and sixth centuries in lowland Britain and its implications for English place-name studies.
Place-name studies is a small scholarly sub-discipline, and those who work on the toponymy of lowland Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries comprise an even smaller subset of workers within it. Publications and theses on the period from those engaged in such work inevitably are not numerous, but it is a recurrent feature of even the most recent examples that they tend to favour very traditional conceptions of the period: of massive in-migration of North-West Germanic dialect speakers speakers, engendering rapid language shift as part of a suite of profound cultural changes brought about by violence and the slaughter, displacement or enslavement of the Romano-British population. This presentation introduces several important works in the fields of archaeology and history, seldom seen in toponomastic bibliographies, that have been published since 2013. It highlights where their conclusions conflict with seemingly-current views in place-name studies, or suggest new interpretative possibilities. A small number of publications based on the results of analyses of ancient DNA or stable isotope samples are also discussed, as they offer sometimes radical new perspectives on migration and mobility in Britain. In synthesising these various strands, some cautious suggestions regarding future research are offered. There must be a shift away from thinking in terms of national-level models to ones based on particular regional circumstances. Above all, there is a need for greater interdisciplinary awareness, communication, and collaboration. (A list of works referenced in the presentation or otherwise relevant to the subject matter is appended to the presentation slides.)
1000-1030 Gavin Smith: Social systems analysis and English place-names: the example of the cultural hegemonies of Kings Æthelberht, Rædwald and Sigeberht
The paper applies social networks concepts—including central-places, estates, elites, gatekeepers, lingua francas and cultural hegemonies—to English toponymy. Using Surrey parish and manorial names as its sample, it proposes that a seventh-century sequence of estate-naming fashions can be identified, dated and associated with the political hegemonies sequentially ruling the county. Kentish hegemony c. AD 600 gave the county name ‘Surrey’: a -ge name attached to the minster district in the ‘south’ of St Paul’s diocese focussed on London. Overking Rædwald of East Anglia, a probably Swedish-identifying war-lord, created a peace in the 620s whose scribes used the Scandinavian form -stede to record estates on the relatively fertile east Surrey North Downs and environs. East Anglian royal Christianity, via sponsored southern British new dioceses including those of Wessex and Mercia, generated from the 630s sequentially Germanic -ingas (‘people, household’) for the first hundredal minsters, and then -ham (‘home, seat’) for minsters then parishes; both forms usually prefaced by the personal name of the first priest/owner. In Surrey these East Anglian forms arrived as exonyms, in three stages: in west Surrey in the 630s via the Wessex diocese of Dorchester on Thames (-ingas minsters); in north central Surrey via a Mercian incursion south of the Thames in the 670s (-ham parishes); and again in west Surrey in the 680s during the hegemony of the ex-pagan usurper of Wessex the British-named Cædwalla and his Christian converter Wilfrid then bishop of the neighbouring South Saxons (a revived -ingas minster system).
1030-1100 Edward Martin: Place-names in a post-royal landscape – Rendlesham after Rædwald
Bede, writing in AD 731 probably gave us the earliest piece of British etymology: in uico regio qui dicitur Rendlaesham, id est mansio Rendili (‘in the royal village which is called Rendlesham, that is the residence of Rendil’). Much has recently been discovered about the Anglo-Saxon royal centre at Rendlesham (C. Scull et al., Lordship and Landscape in East Anglia AD 400–800, Research Report of the Society of Antiquaries of London No. 84, 2024) but understanding the subsequent medieval landscape is still a challenge and place-names are a major tool in that quest, even if their etymologies are part of the challenge.
1100-1130 coffee
1130-1300 session 2
1130-1200 Lyn Boothman: Prominent surnames, kinship, and stability in Long Melford
The presenter uses a population reconstruction to study the history of the inhabitants of Long Melford, and used this to analyse the range of surnames present in this parish from the late seventeenth century to the mid nineteenth. The prominent (most common) surnames became more important over this time period, kinship networks more complex and stability more centred in the families of semi-skilled and unskilled workers.
1200-1230 Thomas Clancy: A county of contrasts: settlement names in Ayrshire
1230-1300 Eilidh NicGilleRuaidh: Report on Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba (AÀA)/Gaelic place-names of Scotland database
Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba (AÀA) is the national advisory partnership for Gaelic place-names in Scotland. Our main remit is to provide correct and consistent forms of Gaelic place-names for signage and other published materials and to promote those forms through our database accessible on our website. This report looks at who AÀA are, our origins and an insight into how we carry out our research. We will also take a look at the information available in our database, as well as the other resources, such as our Gaelic maps, available on our website. Lastly, the report will take a look at some of the project we have been involved in, such as the Forgotten Woodlands and Facal is Fearann, as well as an overview of our publications, including the forthcoming publication ‘Further Scottish Place-Name Papers of William J. Watson’, edited by Dr Jake King. More information on the Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba partnership is available on our website at www.ainmean-aite.scot.
1300-1400 lunch
1400-1500 session 3: Ireland
1400-1430 Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich: Nicknames in working-class Wexford
Wexford is a medium sized Irish provincial town that was formerly a major centre of export for agricultural and fishery goods. Three iron foundries were also a feature of the town in the early twentieth century, with the last of these surviving in ever-declining form up until the year 2000. This provided the basis for a relatively stable and closeknit working class community in which nicknames of all sorts were, and still are, exceedingly common.
Many of these nicknames are inexplicable outside the immediate circle of this who coined them, while others are readily recognisable as the usual shortened personal names such as Mick, Johnny, Paddy, etc. To add to this there is a host of nicknames which are/were a play on the subjects personal name, more often than not involving alliteration, e.g. Abbey < Albert; Badger < Brendan; Kiwi < Kevin; Pax < Patrick; Tombo < Thomas. We have unusual local variations as in the case of Tucker, which has been used for both Anthony and Thomas.
Plays on surnames are also very common and many are quite straightforward such as Dodo < Doran and Anchor < Anglim, but we also have the more unusual variety that were generated by more ‘lateral’ thinking, e.g. ‘Dinger’ Bell, or ‘Bardoge’ (a local name for the stickleback fish) Roche (a homonym of the fish ‘Roach’ or ‘Rocheen’ as it is called in Wexford). Mysteriously, some names such as ‘Hopper’ are also regularly used for unrelated families of McGraths, the motivation of which is wholly unclear.
Of course, many of the nicknames are based on a personal characteristic (sometimes sarcastically) or one’s temperament. Whence ‘Turk’ (bellicose); ‘Suck’ (craven), ‘Nettle’ (contrary), ‘Tiny’, ‘Mousey’ (small in stature); ‘Brownie’, ‘Blacky’ (dark in complexion). Many of these names became intergenerational family identifiers, particularly where we have multiple families of the same surname, as in the case of Murphy, Roche and Walsh.
It is of course true to say, that some of these names were never used to address the person involved, as in the case of ‘John the Liar’, ‘Slap the Rasher’ or ‘Skin the Goat’, but most were, and many were even preferred by the holder.
As far as the motivation and the environment in which such names were/are used, this is multifaceted. Some nicknames have negative undertones, some positive. Some are confined to specific environments (team sports; workplace), and many died out with changes in circumstance. This paper explores various aspects of these nicknames and their motivation, hopefully in a humorous manner, and asks the question as to whether this field of study deserves more attention not only from onomasticians, but also sociologists and psychologists. It also notes that recent social instability caused primarily by a severe housing shortage and changes in employment patterns has apparently decreased the generation of such names at the present time.
1430-1500 Aengus Finnegan: The fields of Athlone: town park and field names outside the walls
The existence of a collection of late seventeenth-century maps of the town owes much to Athlone’s strategic and military significance at that time. These maps provide important insights into the layout of the town and its connection with the surrounding landscape. The lands adjoining the town wall, in particular, were a key component of the economic life of the town. This is reflected in the extraordinary collection of historical field names and names of town plots (over 80 names in the area adjoining the east-town alone) which survive in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century records. Most of these names are of Irish-language origin; a selection will be interpreted, and possible locations around the town identified.
1500-1530 Paul Tempan: Commemoration, marketing or other motivation? – borrowing from abroad in Belfast street-names
1530-1600 coffee
1600-1800 session 4
1600-1630 Shaun Tyas: The name of Redburga, queen of Ecgberht (802-839)
The name of King Ecgberht’s wife is only recorded in a Latin Brut chronicle (Trinity College Oxford MS 10) as Redburga. The manuscript was made in 1484 but it preserves a chronicle made at Bridlington before 1274. The chronicle is cited in the dossier of monastic submissions sent to Edward I in 1291 and it was the source used by Pierre de Langtoft for his French verse chronicle written soon after 1307. Redburga looks like an authentic Old English name, Rædburh, Latinised, but all the details about her in the chronicle are implausible, suggesting her name and story are invented. The name could have been inspired by the similar name of her predecessor, Eadburh, but another possibility, given the cultural context of the manuscript, is that it is inspired by the name of Havelok the Dane’s wife, Goldburga, as ‘red’ in Old and Middle English describes the colour of gold, making the two names synonyms. The Middle English poem of Havelok was also written in the east of England and at the same time as Langtoft’s chronicle, before 1310 at the latest.
1630-1700 Chris Lewis: Fashions in personal names and social mobility in late Anglo-Saxon England
Historians interested in social mobility in England in the century before 1066 have paid little or no attention to personal names. There is good evidence that after 950 the name-stock of all social classes was being enriched and diversified by new forenames coined within the tradition of Old English dithematic naming, as well as by the adoption of non-English and hybrid personal names. This paper examines a selection of the new names in their social and geographical contexts. It ranges across the country, but Suffolk features prominently because the evidence there is especially rich. The inference that this was a period of innovation in personal naming at first sight sits uneasily alongside James Chetwood’s recent demonstration that late OE dithematic names were becoming more concentrated and stereotyped. The paper concludes by suggesting how social mobility of different kinds might explain both trends in naming.
1700-1730 Keith Briggs: Introduction to Bury St Edmunds street-names
The street-names of Bury are remarkable in that nearly all them are already recorded in a survey made in 1295. Most are of transparent etymology, but a few examples of obscure meaning were also discussed in this talk.
1930-2030 walking tour looking at street-names
Sunday 29 March
1000-1100 session 5
1000-1030 Jennifer Scherr: Bridge names in Somerset
1030-1100 Forum: SNSBI outreach activities
1100-1115 coffee
1115-1245 session 6 Water
1115-1145 Peter Kitson: The British river-name list of the Ravenna Cosmography
The list of British river-names in the Ravenna Cosmography is by so much the longest of its river-name lists as to demand consideration as a document in itself. I offer a theory of its origin (and that of half the British island-name list) explaining simply and immediately the absence of Thames and Severn, and with archaeological plausibility the fact that the final name is Latin not Brittonic. The conventions of the genre to which I think the original document belonged put enough constraint upon positions of features that the majority even of names not attested elsewhere can be assigned with high probability to particular rivers, and all but a couple within narrow geographical limits. Some remarks are made about etymologies, but this is not an etymological paper, it is one about identifications and contexts.
1145-1215 Keith Briggs: The name of the river Deben
Though the Deben is one of the major estuaries of Suffolk, the name is not recorded before 1576. This talk reviews the evidence on the origin of the name. It was stated by Ekwall to be a back-formation from Debenham. This is essentially correct, but it is important to note that it was not back-formed locally, but rather by remote authors writing texts under the influence of classical geographers. Harrison started the process in 1576 by inventing the name Deva on the model of the Cheshire Dee as it occurs in Ptolemy, but this artificial name was soon modified to Deben.
1215-1245 Abigail Lloyd: Watery names and island sites: a comparison of Cambridgeshire, Ely and Essex
Investigation of wetland names for the University of Cambridge project Airs, waters and agues: the history of endemic malaria in England and Denmark is revealing intriguingly differing naming patterns between these two adjacent (and arguably equally wet) counties. Late medieval and post-medieval place-names reflect ways of managing and existing alongside and within wetlands, prior to modern drainage, whilst hinting at the considerable changes effected by that drainage. Meanwhile, some of the earliest place-names in the same areas potentially reveal common settlement priorities utilising ‘island-sites’. These are being investigated in a follow-on project entitled Where the cognitive and the physical landscape meet: looking again at landscape descriptions in place-names in (early) medieval England. This paper presents emerging results from these two ongoing research projects, focusing in particular on the counties of Cambridgeshire, the Isle of Ely and Essex.
1245-1330 lunch
1330-1730 excursion to Long Melford and Lavenham
1330 meet at the coach bay at the north end of Angel Hill, near the war memorial (a five minute walk from the Guildhall; go north on Guildhall St, turn right into Abbeygate St, then left into Angel Hill)
- 1330 coach Bury to Melford
- 1400 Melford Hall & church
- 1530 coach Melford to Lavenham
- 1545 Lavenham town & church
- 1715 coach Lavenham to Bury
1800-1930 dinner at the Dog & Partridge
1945-2030 session 7
1945-2030 Jeremy Harte: Elves, devils and eccentrics: fictive senses of ‘church’ in English place-names
Names go by contraries: across northern Europe words for church are found describing natural and ancient landmarks, from stone circles to Roman villas. English has the oldest and most diverse names of this type and may provide a clue to their meaning. Six kinds of fairy congregate in caves, stones and hollows but they are not the only patrons of ironic churches. The Devil has them; so do rooks, cats and goats; so also the ambiguous characters Lud and Gun, and an eccentric called Disley. Adjectival qualifiers – lawless, wild, old, and most popularly, sunken – place these names in negative contrast to the village church. The semantic spectrum of English names is wider than those in the Celtic languages, which do not name supernatural beings, and the Scandinavian, which seldom credit anything else. Is this a clue to the history of these names?