Field-names of North-East Scotland: a socio-onomastic study

Burns, Alison (2015) Field-names of North-East Scotland: a socio-onomastic study. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Field-names in Scotland are part of the oral tradition, passed down from generation to generation of farmers. Despite the valuable holdings at the Scottish Field Name Survey (University of Edinburgh), work to collect these names has been patchy and many areas of Scotland remain uncovered. The introduction of a new numbering system for tax purposes has resulted in a marked decline in the use of field-names, and generally only older members of the community can recall the names. There are few written records that preserve early forms, and little systematic study of the topic. Therefore, time is running out to collect the names of Scottish fields.

The focus of this thesis is a corpus of 1552 field-names from the north-east of Scotland which I collected using a socio-onomastic approach. Spoken interviews were used as the main tool for data collection drawing on practices from the discipline of sociolinguistics. A key aspect of this research is the social aspect of naming and the combination of sociolinguistic methods with more traditional onomastic methods.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: onomastics, sociolinguistics, socio-onomastics, minor names, field-names, Aberdeenshire, North-East Scotland, place-names
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Supervisor's Name: Hough, Professor Carole
• Date of Award: 2015
• Depositing User: Ms Alison Burns
• Unique ID: glathesis:2015-6424
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 03 Jun 2015 09:21
• Last Modified: 04 Jun 2015 15:56
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6424

Related URLs

• http://www.alison.itester.dk/