Terminology and place names


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By ContourChris on 14/06/19 at 5:52pm

Hi Everybody, Does anybody know of any resources that define the features that you find whilst out walking ie: knolls, knotts, scree ect. I am also interested in the history of how certain fells got their names.


By Lancashire Lad on 14/06/19 at 10:57pm

Hi,

There are numerous sources available. Some of the ones I occasionally refer to are listed below.

The following books are all worth having, (The first listed is a goldmine of information, and considered to be one of the very best available on the subject). It’s worth noting though, that the exact origins and meanings of many place-names have been lost over time, and so there is an over-abundance of conjecture – even in the best of toponymy books!

A Dictionary of Lake District Place-Names (Diana Whaley - 2006).

The Cumbrian Dictionary of Dialect. Tradition, and Folklore (William Rollinson – 1997).

The GonMad Cumbrian Dictionary & Phrase Book (Dan Gibson – 2012).

Lake District Place-Names (Robert Gambles – revised edition 2013).

These online sources are also worth checking out: -

Cumbrian words and place-names (LDNP): -
https://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/localspecialities/words
Cumbrian Dialect (Low Nest Farm): -
http://www.lownestfarm.co.uk/olden/dialect.htm
Cumbrian Toponymy (Wikipedia): -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbrian_toponymy
Glossary of Lakeland words (Lakeland Dialect Society): -
https://www.lakelanddialectsociety.co.uk/glossary
Place names in North West England (Geoffrey Leech): -
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/doc_library/linguistics/leechg/leech_2006.pdf
Cumbrian Dialect (Steve Shearwater): -
http://steveshearwater.co.uk/about-the-series/dialect-words/
The Place-names of Cumberland and Westmorland (W.J.Sedgefield – 1915): -
https://archive.org/stream/cu31924028028458#page/n7/mode/2up
A glossary of words and phrases pertaining to the dialect of Cumberland. (Willian Dickinson – 1878): - https://archive.org/stream/aglossarywordsa00dickgoog#page/n10/mode/2up
A supplement to the glossary of the dialect of Cumberland. (E.W.Prevost – 1905): - https://archive.org/stream/supplementtoglos00prevrich#page/n5/mode/2up

Glossary of geography terms (Wikipedia). - NB: General geographical terminology – not specific to Cumbria/Lake District.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_geography_terms

Regards, Mike.


By ContourChris on 15/06/19 at 9:02am

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you very much.


By Lancashire Lad on 15/06/19 at 11:51am

By ContourChris on 15/06/19 at 10:02am
This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you very much.

You're welcome.

One that I forgot to include is: -
Lakeland Words (B.Kirkby - 1898) - https://archive.org/details/cu31924103992735/page/n7

You may have noticed that several of the links I gave refer to document downloads available from the Internet Archive website?

If you have more than a passing interest in etymology/toponymy, that website might be of some interest to you.

If you do a websearch for "Internet Archive", and then go to the homepage of the site, you can enter search words for almost any subject you might care to name.

The site has innumerable downloadable texts, (mainly old and out of copyright books etc.), and is where I originally found many of the ones I now regularly refer to.

On doing such a search, you will generally be presented with an extensive page of thumbnails, showing what's available.
Clicking on any given thumbnail will go to the online viewing page for that particular book/article. However (see image below), if you scroll down on that online viewing page, you will see a list of other available options for viewing and downloading the item in question. - Almost all of them are downloadable as PDF's.

Hope that may be of some help.

Regards,
Mike.



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