May Williamson: The Non-Celtic Place-Names of the Scottish Border ...

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PREFACE
This thesis has been produced under the conditions of the Gatty (Florence Emily and Charles
Tindal) Memorial Scholarship, the holder of which “must pursue advanced study or research
in Scottish Language and Literature with special reference to dialects on both sides of the
border and to such border antiquities and music as bear on the subject”.
In order to satisfy these requirements as far as possible, rather more attention has been given
to historical and dialectal notes than is usual or necessary in place-name studies.
The following work is intended as a survey of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian place-name
material in the Border Counties. I have tried to demonstrate what types of names occur, where
they are situated, and roughly to what period they belong. Thus it has been more convenient
to group the names under their endings than to arrange them by parishes in the manner of the
English Place-Name Society’s (EPNS) volumes.
It is almost impossible to date Scottish place-names with any certainty since spellings for the
majority are not found before the 13 th century, but /ii/ generally they may be classified under
three headings:-
(a)
(b)
(c)
Old English
Middle English
Scandinavian, and Middle English of Scandinavian origin
Between the first two classes there must be a good deal of overlapping. It is known that names
in -ing, -ingahām, -ingtūn and -hām probably ceased to be formed after the Old English (OE)
period, but many of the other habitational endings which in England belong to this time must
have continued to be formed at a much later date in the North. Similarly many of the names
classified as Middle English (ME) may belong to the OE period.
It has been my practice to count as an ending the second element of each name if a habitative
or topographical term. Thus Torwoodlee is discussed under -wood and Capehope Burn under
-hope. Only the main, or original, parts of names are of importance in a survey of this kind,
and so where groups occur such as Caverton, Caverton Mains, Caverton Hillhead, Caverton
Mill, I have dealt only with the basic name, Caverton.
Names which do not appear in the 1-inch Ordnance Survey maps, but which are found in
sources before 1600, have been used for purposes of illustration and comparison. In most
cases I have not consulted the /iii/ 6-inch maps in attempts to locate these or other minor
names.
The phonetic symbols used in the transcription of place-name pronunciations are those
normally employed by the EPNS.