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Gaelic and Scots 1300-1600:
Some Place-Name Evidence W. F. H. Nicolaisen
Please Note :This text contains numbers highlighted in BOLD. Each number refers to the appropriate number in the NOTES AND REFERENCES section at the end of the text.
Have
you ever agreed to read a paper because you wanted to
please a
friend
and because the date of delivery seemed to be so far off as to
offer
the meantime to research the topic
fully and
plenty
of opportunity in
therefore
to put the promise into practice with a reasonable chance
of
success?
If you have, you have gained a companion in the last fifteen
months,
and if, by any chance, you then discovered that your
promise
had
been rash and ill-considered, the topic impossible,
and the
intervening
time practically non-existent, and that you were likely
to
lose
that friend who had so persuasively extracted that, oh
so heavy,
pound
of intellectual flesh from you, then you have also just
acquired
another
fellow sufferer. As is usually the case under such circumstances,
it all
began so innocently: In April of last year I received a letter
from
Derick
Thomson - the friend - advising me that he was "in
process of
getting
the 1988 Gaelic-Scots conference off the ground, and would
like
to know
as quickly as possible [the alarm bells should have rung
loudly
and
persistently at that phrase] if you can give a plenary paper at
it." All
very
innocuous stuff so far and very non-threatening; and who
wouldn't
be flattered
by such an invitation? The letter then continued: "One
of
the
core topics of the conference will be 'The Gaelic-Scots interface
in
the
period 1300-1600', and we wonder if you would give a
paper on
'Place-names
in Gaelic and Scots', their incidence, relationship,
dominance
over each other etc. etc., in that period, or in a part of
period.
We want to focus in various ways on how the two linguistic
traditions
interacted at this very formative period. You might of course
want
to go a little further back in time, or modify the topic in some
other
way."
I cannot deny that the precision and scope of this brief
appealed
to me,
even excited me, and as I was at the time enjoying a semester
in
London
with forty of our students, I accepted the invitation,
an
acceptance
which I then regarded as prudent but since then have
come
to look
upon as foolish, ill-advised and sleep-stealing, although I
notice
satisfaction that even my euphoria did
not destroy all my
circumspection so that in my reply I must have offered
to provide only
some place-name evidence, and not the place-name
evidence, for this
demanding assignment.
But why this apparent change of heart and
why this anecdotal
introduction whose personal note may have
been deemed somewhat
inappropriate by quite a few of you, and perhaps rightly
so? Let me try
to offer you some explanation, maybe even justification,
by examining
first some of the details of that initial brief: There
is, first of all, the
period chosen and assigned, 1300-1600. Three hundred
years are a big
chunk of the Scottish past, and why those three hundred
years? In terms
of political chronology, they stretch from Bannockburn
and All That, or
the Bruce's de-clawing of the Hammer of the Scots, to
the end of a
separate non-English Scottish monarchy, or the son's
accession to the
throne of his mother's executioner. Are these
emphatically extra-linguistic
events significant for the two main languages
of Scotland in
that period, Scots and Gaelic? Presumably the answer
is that, indeed,
they were, insofar as, on the one hand, decisive battles
won, like the one
1314, not only create dynasties and achieve a new
sense of nationhood
but also sustain or renew linguistic pride and
awareness, however
inarticulate this may have been despite Barbour's
Brus of 1376, and on
the other hand, the removal of a court from its
homeland, as in 1603,
shifts not only the political focus but also the linguistic
one, depriving
the homeland of powerful guidance, initiative and
incentive. The three
centuries from 1314 to 1603, then, may be regarded
both politically and
linguistically as a time of intense and essential
Scottishness, never
encountered in such satisfying, unquestioned consolidation
before or
since, despite its obvious internal dichotomies,
divisions and power
struggles - "interfaces", if you like
- again both politically and
linguistically.
If, for these reasons, it can be claimed without
much fear of
contradiction that the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries were
a politically "very formative period" - to
use Derick Thomson's alluring
phrase again - how applicable is this assertion to the
development of the
two languages in question, Scots and Gaelic? It had
been my hope that
one of the plenary papers at this conference might
be devoted to the
strictly linguistic aspects of this question, the intralinguistic
evidence,
so to speak, but unfortunately this seems to be something
that will have
to wait to be explored at a future conference of this
kind. Suffice it to say
that, after the initial inroads on Gaelic through the
creation of boroughs
on the east coast in the twelfth century and a more
general Anglicization
process south of the Forth and Clyde, by 1300 the
spatial contraction of
Gaelic and the concomitant advance of Scots were
already well under
way, and we must expect the period at the centre
of our current
discussion to be a time in which these two
complementary trends
continue,
although the speed with which they happened is not
easy to
assess
and must have differed from place to place, time to
time, and
circumstance
to circumstance. It is unlikely that there was
only
confrontation,
and a certain amount of interaction, sometimes amounting
to bilingualism, must have taken place. Although
these are
reasonable
assumptions, based partly on back-projection from
the
contemporary
scene, there is, however, far too little solid evidence
to
support
them and to give them substance, considering how
flimsy the
relevant
sources and the clues they offer are. After all, the period
1300-1600
has to be described as late and post-mediaeval on both
sides of the
linguistic
divide, and not as a second flowering of the Dark
Ages.
Naturally,
it is to be understood that the written materials available
for
such
an evaluation are both more extensive and more accessible
in Scots
than
their counterparts in Gaelic but nevertheless, as in
so many other
fields
of research touched upon at this conference, a great deal
of work
still
has to be done, and can be done with a considerable
chance of
success.
What we still have to learn in particular is to ask
the right
questions.
If
the linguistic evidence is so scanty and if its scholarly
scrutiny has
so far
been neither systematic nor common, how can onomastic
evidence
be expected
to help out? Although the study of names is still struggling
to gain
proper recognition by modern linguists as a rigorous,
academically
respected discipline, the automatically applied axiom,
especially
among
linguistic historians, seems to be: When all else fails,
turn to
place
names! There are several reasons for such a distress call,
some of
them
based on valid assumptions, others, I am afraid, on
astonishing
misconceptions.
It is the latter which cause the student of names to
lose
sleep
when requested to perform on an occasion like this. Strange
to say,
both
the good and the bad reasons have to do with the fact
that names
are
primarily onomastic and only secondarily linguistic source
material.
I have
several times written and spoken on this topic before
but it is
essential
to my argument that I outline at least briefly what I
mean by
this
rather stern pronouncement.
Fundamentally,
the heart of the matter is this: When words become
names,
i.e. when they essentially cease being items in a
lexicon and
become
items in an onomasticon, something happens to them
semantically;
they lose - some of them almost immediately,
others more
gradually
- lexical meaning and acquire onomastic contents.
At the
same
time on the functional level, they begin to denote, i.e. to
isolate, to
individualize,
to exclude, while shedding the ability to connote, i.e.
to
include,
to embrace, to incorporate, to permit abstraction. That
does not
mean
that the functional properties of names condemn
them to an
existence
in which their only link with their environment is through
the
referent
they designate - far from it. As part of an onomasticon,
they
participate
through their contents with other names in structured
onomastic fields and relate through their specific
locus to other names in
omomastic dialects with discernible patterned
distributions. Such
onomastic fields and dialects may well maintain
contact with their
lexical, i.e. linguistic, counterparts - that is, with
what we ordinarily call
dialects and regional variations - but are neither
congruent with them
nor dependent on them. Distribution maps of
name types or name
components are therefore first and foremost onomastic,
not linguistic,
and the establishment of chronological strata
in the place nomenclature
of any part of the globe allows primarily onomastic
inferences, not
linguistic ones.
Consequently, when linguists or students in
other adjacent disciplines
look to names, especially place names, for
information which words
cannot provide, their legitimate desire to exploit
toponymic evidence has
to be matched by their sobering recognition
of the fundamentally
onomastic nature of the evidence whose help
they seek. Otherwise,
faulty or inflated expectations are bound to
lead to frustration and
disappointment. There are certain things that
names do well and others
that names do badly, like absolute dating, for
example. The ability of
names to function viably without lexical meaning
enables them to
survive when words do not but one has to remember
that they survive as
names, not as words, and that therefore their
testimony regarding
anything beyond their very nature as names is
second-hand, so to speak,
and has to be subjected to appropriate diagnostic
procedures in order to
confer on it a modicum of reliability. Otherwise
any conclusions drawn
may well be suspect or invalid.
Anticipating some of the material to be presented
later, let me
illustrate through three concrete, very Scottish,
examples what I mean:
- (1) If, as I tried to establish many years ago 1 the
phrase-name type "x of
y", like Water of Buchat, Mains of Keithheld,
Bridge of Orchy, Cotts of
Newton, and so on, was created in Scots through
contact with Gaelic, as
the final result of an initial onomastic "translation"
process through
which, let us say, Allt an t-Sluic Lèith became
Burn of Slock Lee, it
would - be erroneous, because simplistic, to
assume that such an
innovative pattern of onomastic usage would of
necessity also be found
in the lexicon of Scots.
- Or (2) if, as frequently
happened in the east from
the sixteenth century onwards, 2 the Gaelic
suffix -ach, after an
intermediate stage of -och, became -o in place
names, with loss of the
final voiceless velar fricative, as in Balerno,
Balmerino, Pitsligo,
Aberlemno, Stracathro, Cambo, and so on, there
is no need for us to
conclude - indeed, we have no right to do so
- that such a plausible,
demonstrable phonological development also affected
Gaelic words in
-ach which may have found their way into the
Scots vocabulary of the
region.
- Or (3) if similarly, in the period under
review, the spelling of
final Gaelic -n as -ng 3 occurs occasionally,
with either temporary or
permanent effect, in names such as Dipling
1568 for Dupplin PER 4,
Benyng
1388 and Bynnyng 1414 for Binny (< Binnin)
WLO,
Langmorgoun
1529 and Langmorn 1598 for Longmorn MOR whose
first
element is Gaelic lann "an enclosure", or Louchkinkeling
1503 for
Lochkinkerane,
the modern Campbeltown Loch in Argyll, it would not
be
permissible to conclude that this was also the fate of final -n
in related
or
unrelated lexical items, should these have survived at all.
Historically,
because
of their special nature, names very often follow their own
traffic
rules,
and although they are, for the purposes of communication,
embedded
in language, both spoken and written, they are also
often
strangers
to it, fossils, grains of sand that may or may not turn
into
pearls.
Bearing
all this in mind, it is essential for us to understand that
the
interrogation
of Gaelic and Scots place names for our purposes, during
the
three hundred years separating Bruce from the Wisest
Fool in
Christendom,
is likely to yield onomastic results of sorts but will possibly
not
be very eloquent about this linguistically formative period.
This is a
very
necessary warning.
When
assessing the Scottish place-name evidence between 1300
and
1600
on these terms, one further factor has to be taken into account:
This
evidence
has come down to us filtered visually through the scribal
habits
of
Scots or English-speaking, certainly non-Gaelic-speaking,
writers
usually
in official, non-local documents, often in a Latin environment
or
in
Latinised guises. This tends to create difficulties when it
comes to the
quest
for the pronunciation which such spellings represent, and
it is
frequently
prudent to abandon such a quest at an inconclusive stage.
More
successful can be the treatment of names and their
variant
spellings
within a written context, since such cumulative spellings are
by
no
means hopelessly without system. For the literate, names
have always
been
as much their spelling as their pronunciation, anyhow,
and it is
quite
possible that certain spelling conventions developed for
certain
names
without direct reference to contemporary pronunciation.
It may,
for
instance, be questioned whether in each instance in
which an
occasional
final -ng spelling appears in place of an -n in the names
just
mentioned,
the visual representation of a contrast between alveolar
[n]
and
velar [(] is intended. These may simply be allographs for
a while
until
one or other begins to dominate in an age more aware of
the need
for
spelling consistency, usually after the three-hundred-year
span on
which
we are concentrating. Also to be borne in mind
are the
continuation
of historical spellings which are perpetuated without
any
regard
to innovations in the pronunciation, and the employment
of
variant
spellings as reflexes of name usage in different onomastic
registers,
like formal vs. informal, or official vs. unofficial, or standard
vs.
vernacular. It is well worth remembering therefore that the
status of
most
of the written sources which provide us with fourteenth-,
fifteenth-,
and
sixteenth-century spellings is such that access to informal,
unofficial, vernacular name usage is usually not easy,
sometimes impossible, a realisation which has important implications
for our attempt
to utilise place names for chronological, stratificatory
and spatial
analyses during the period under review. What we
normally have to play
with are therefore the non-local, official, formal,
perhaps even historic-
or scribally "standardised" written
representations of the names in
question, with all the limitations this suggests,
especially when the texts
in which such names are embedded are in Latin. All
these restrictions do
not invalidate, however, such visual name forms
as potentially helpful
onomastic evidence for the period 1300-1600 A.D.,
but it is nevertheless
preferable that we should know the nature of the
beast before we attempt
to tame it for our purposes. Let us see, then, what
we can do with the
place-name material available to us within the confines,
restrictions and
opportunities just described.
As the examples quoted earlier indicate, a few forays
into the territory
under scrutiny have already been made, and it is
therefore not necessary
for us to start from scratch. In 1959, 1960, and 1965, 5
I investigated
phrase names of the "x of y" type in which
the "x" represents a generic
and the "y" a specific, more often than not
the name of the feature itself
or a name associated with that feature, i.e. a name
as a morpho-syntactic
component of a name, like Water of Ken KCB,
Mains of Auchindachy
BNF, Bridge of Nevis INV, Burn of Oldtown ANG,
and so on. There are
hundreds of this kind on Scottish maps, and at one
time it was claimed,
as part of a deliciously maintained Ordnance Survey
folklore, that they
were the invention of English surveyors and
did not reflect genuine
usage. It can be shown, however, that they existed
as early as the late
fifteenth century in the Northern Isles, not
as homegrown name types
derived from Scandinavian usage, but rather as
Scots imports from the
north-east, mainland where this type had become
established in the
contact between Gaelic and Scots, a contact that
must obviously have
taken place before their exportation to non-Gaelic
speaking Orkney and
Shetland, an event that occurred well within
the three hundred years
that concern at this conference. One of the
earliest documented
instances is þe watter of Esk DMF 1249 but Latinised
or Frenchified
forms like leßarre de Anewyth KCB 1292 or Estircrag
de Gorgyn EDB
1284 or even vallis de Douglas LAN 1389, parci
de Drum ABD 1367,
lacus de leuyn FIF 1339, or grangia de Deruesey
FIF 1329 may well hide
similar constructions. Names like Auldtoun de
Knokinblew ABD 1511
or Cotis de Lanbride MOR 1488 are, of course,
common by the end of
the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth
century. The thorough
Scotticisation of this name type which obscures
its Gaelic origins
presupposes lengthy co-existence of speakers of
both languages in the
areas in which it was transferred from Gaelic to Scots
and must allow for
some time to have passed before its transplantation
into some other
parts of Scotland became possible. What we have
here, then, is the
acquisition
of a morpho-syntactic name type by speakers of Scots
from
speakers
of Gaelic, initially complete with the incorporated, phonologically adapted
toponymic item, later as an open category. The onomasticon of
Scots has been enriched.
When
this conference met in Aberdeen in 1985, I offered a
paper on
"Gaelic
Place Names in Scots," 6 some of the conclusions
of which are
relevant
here, especially when re-viewed and re-interpreted
in the
context
of the present more severely focused discussion. The paper
was
mostly
concerned with the most common phenomenon of
onomastic
interference
in bilingual situations, the phonological adaptation of
the
names
of one language by the other, usually by the incoming
language
from the
already resident one, although the roles of donor and
receiver
can, albeit
much less frequently, also be reversed. 7 At the heart of
that
discussion
was the fate of the Gaelic toponymic suffix -ach in
place
names
appropriated by speakers of Scots; some examples, like
Balerno,
Stracathro,
and Cambo, have already been briefly alluded to. As I
said
in 1985,
the place-name evidence seems to suggest that in eastern,
and
eastern
central, Scotland "the earliest, forms of the thirteenth
and
fourteenth
centuries preserve the original Gaelic -ach faithfully, but
from
the fifteenth
century onwards forms, and by that I mean spellings,
in
-och, -auch,
and -augh are the rule, indicating that rounding the vowel
from -a-
to -o-, possibly under the influence of the following
velar
fricative,
had already taken place; in fact, this tendency had obviously
already
existed for a while, as some of the thirteenth-century forms
for
Balerno
MLO show, but spellings without the final fricative do not
seem
to have
been much recorded before the fifteenth century and
only
become
plentiful from the sixteenth century onwards ... I know
of no
instance
in which the loss of the fricative preceded the change from
-a- to
-o- in
the vowel of the syllable." 8 As one can see from this evaluation
of
the spelling
history of these names - and there is nothing more satisfying
for a scholar
than to be able to quote himself - I was, in 1985, willing
to
draw fairly
firm conclusions regarding changes in pronunciation
from
reliably
recorded changes in spelling. Although I would,
perhaps,
advocate
a little more caution now, that risk is, on the whole,
worth
taking,
and this leap probably our only way of reaching beyond
the
visual
record to the audible evidence on which it is ultimately
based,
however
indirect or even distorted the connection may be. Be that
as it
may, this
is clearly grist to the mill of the current topic and therefore
worth re-presenting
in this summarised form.
It is
also worth reiterating that -o is not the only possible result
of the
adaptation
of Gaelic -ach into Scots in the course of the acquisition
of
place names.
Outside the area in which -o is the normal modern reflex,
and has
been since the end of our triad of centuries, several
other
developments
are discernible: 9
- (a) the final fricative can be replaced
by
the homorganic
voiceless stop, as in Dalgarnock DMF or Balernock
DNB (after -a- had become -o- or concurrent with
that change);
- (b) in
areas which remained Gaelic-speaking much
longer and in which
English, rather than Scots, tended to replace
Gaelic, the change
from -a- to -o- occurs in the Scotticised names but
the final fricative is
retained (Badenoch INV, Garioch ABD, Balloch
DNB, Tulloch ROS,
Rannoch PER);
- (c) Gaelic -ach remains unchanged
not only in Gaelic
map names but also in such names as The
Cabrach BNF or Coigach
ROS.
Whereas from a modern point of view
these variations might be
regarded as differences within the onomastic dialect
of Scotland, their
spatial distribution allows us not only to draw
a map or maps making
their scatter visible but also to translate these maps
of space into maps of
time, and to claim, with all the cautionary
safeguards that such a
translation from one dimension into another
demands, that the
development of -ach > -och > -o occurred in
the earliest contact zones of
Gaelic and Scots, mostly within the time frame
of our discussion, while
the retention of the final fricative in -och, as well
as of -ach itself, reflects
later phases of contact or lack of contact altogether.
The interface shifts
westward in time. This is probably the closest
we have come so far to
injecting the possibility of cartographic sequencing
into our discussion,
although a more systematic and more comprehensive
survey of all the
relevant materials is still required to make
the arguments fully
persuasive.
Closely related to the fate, in Scots, of the
Gaelic adjectival toponymic
suffix -ach, reflecting a nominative or at least
a regularised nominative,
is the parallel development of Gaelic locatives
in -aich, earlier -aigh.
Although not every Scottish place name ending in
-ie or -y can be traced
back to such a form in Gaelic, many of them can
and, not surprisingly,
their number is probably larger than that of names
in original, -ach; after
all, place names are used much more often in the
locative case than in
the nominative. I only have to remind you of
Cairnie, Cluny, Crathie,
Fyvie, Logie, Petty, Towie, and their like, to illustrate
what I mean. It
can probably be argued safely that the loss
of the voiceless palatal
fricative[(] in. these names occurred more or less
at the same time as
that of its velar counterpart [X], perhaps even a
little earlier since for
many names ending in -ie/-y no early spellings
displaying it are on
record. These names are therefore not as easily
employed in the tracing
of the gradual advance of Scots into Gaelic territory,
but whenever they
are unambiguously recorded they must be seen
as proof of considerable
Scotticisation and therefore of a strong Scots presence
at that time.
Of the several other exciting things, some
predictable, some not so
predictable, that happen at the interface of Gaelic
and Scots in our
period, I want to mention only another three to
make my point. First, on
the graphemic front, there is the considerable
and somewhat amusing
confusion on the part of the scribes in their
attempts to render the
sequence Uachd- in the common Gaelic generic
uachdar "an upland,
upper part." 10
This has now become regularised as Auchter- (as in
Auchterarder
PER, Auchterhouse ANG, or Auchtermuchty FIF) or
sometimes as
Ochter- (as in Ochtertyre PER) both of which spellings
share the same
pronunciation. In the thirteenth century, the favourite
representation
of the vowel in question was -u-, -v-, -w-, or -ou- (for
instance,
Uchterardour 1201-3, Vchterardour 1226, Ouchyrardour
1238, Wterardore
c. 1290) implying an /u/ pronunciation. This
continues
well into our period but -o- spellings begin to compete
(Ochtermokadi
135OL; even earlier for Auchtertool FIF). Auchter-
seems to have
become the norm in the second half of the sixteenth
century. In
the Register of the Great Seal, for example, we find the
following spellings:
- Auchterforfair, Auchtirforfair ANG 1570,
- Auchtirles ABD 1546,
- Auchterles ABD 1561-2,
- Auchtermuckty FIF 1548,
- Auchtermoneye FIF 1565-6,
- Auchtertule FIF 1568,
- Auchtertyrie MOR 1577-8,
- Auchtirmony STL 1557-8.
It is impossible to say without a detailed
study whether
the new spellings also reflect a change in pronunciation,
at least in
the mouths of the speakers of Scots.
Second,
in the field of morphology, the Scots adaptations
of
compound names
containing Gaelic achadh "field" from an early
date
in our period
show a tendency to level this generic to Auchen-/Auchin-. 12
While this would be a legitimate, indeed the expected,
phonological
adaptation of the diminutive achadhan, achadh followed
by the feminine
genitive singular definite article na or by the genitive
plural nan
provides other contexts, and the form must have its origins
there, although
it also occurs before adjectives, before the genitive
singular of
masculine nouns, and before personal names. A possible
explanation
would be that this simplification took place in the death
throes of the
Gaelic donor language in the areas of Scotland concerned,
but it is more
likely to have happened in the recipient language through
a process
of morpho-phonological simplification at a time when
knowledge
of Gaelic grammar had become minimal or non-existent.
Names in
this category would be, first
- Achindeny EDB 1425,
- Achintibber LAN 1426,
- Achincloich AYR 1449-50,
- Achinynche AYR 1482,
- Achingray LAN 1507-8,
and then
- Auchinbak RNF 1450-51,
- Auchinbovy STL 1483-4,
- Auchincloich ABD 1505-6,
- Auchaniussy ANG 1510(Achlufy 1428),
- and Auchinbay AYR 1513.
This levelling takes place
therefore in
the very heart of our period.
The inference
here is not that Scots has gained a new toponymic
generic but
rather that in the Scots version of the formerly Gaelic
onomasticon
an element is created which is seen and used as typical and,
no longer relating
to specific/grammatical gender, case and number, i.e.
to something
linguistic, takes on onomastic appropriateness although it
never becomes
productive in the recipient language, Scots. There may
well be potential
in this category of names, for dating purposes.
Third, graphemic
and semantic forces combine to bring about a
morphological restructuring of some names. 13 This
process begins with
the tendency, in Scots, already alluded to 14 and
particularly prevalent in
the sixteenth century, independent of any language
contact with Gaelic,
to use -ng for -n in the spelling of certain names,
especially in those in
which -n is preceded by -i-. These may be allographic
variants with no
socio-onomastic implications or they may be
register-specific. For
Stirling, for example, which is usually Striuelin
and the like from the
twelfth century onwards, although occasional spellings
like Striueling
occur from the beginning of the recorded evidence,
-ling spellings
become dominant from the fifteenth century
onwards and take over
completely from the second half of the sixteenth
century on. The name
Dunfermline which starts out in the same quarter
of the twelfth century
Dunfermelyn, Dunfermelin, or Dunfermlin,
also develops -ling
at the beginning of the fifteenth century
which then predominate
and take over from -lin at the same time as in
Stirling, i.e. in the
middle of the sixteenth century but, unlike
Stirling, are completely
replaced a century later by a -lin(e) ending which
does not represent the
original -lin suffix. Anyhow, many names are affected
in various ways,
sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily,
by this spelling trend,
and in certain instances this provides the opportunity
for secondary
semantic reinterpretation, the potential for which is
never far off when
lexically meaningless names invite semantic
and pseudo-etymological
tampering. Thus the, for speakers of Scots, lexically
opaque Gaelic lann
"an enclosure" in landa Morgund 1226,
Lanmorgyn 1368, from the
sixteenth century on displays Lang- spellings
(Langmorgoun 1529,
Langmorn 1598) and is probably also pronounced
accordingly. In a
further register switch to standard English, this
becomes Long- so that
the modern name is now Longmorn MOR. Similarly,
the Moray name
Lhanbryde (Lamnabride 1208-15, Lanbride c. 1350) occasionally shows
spellings in our period (Langbride 1529,
Langbryde 1570-1,
Langbryd 1524) and is sometimes spelt Longbryde/-bride
in the
eighteenth century, but later reverts to spellings
with -n. There are
several other examples of such re-interpretation
of -lan- as -lang- in
concert with graphemic changes. The claim may
be made that, while
like Langbride and Longbride were prevalent,
the specific,
-bride, originally referring to St. Brigid, was also
given new semantic life
in terms of English but this would be difficult
to substantiate in
retrospect.
There can, however, be no doubt that the Aberdeenshire
name King
Edward which is on record as Kynedor in 1178 and
as Kennedor in 1272
underwent secondary re-interpretation of both
elements, once the
Gaelic cinn, or rather its Scots spelling
Kin-, had acquired a
sixteenth-century variant King-. The spelling
sequence Kynedor 1178,
Kynneduart 1276, Kenedward c. 1250, Kingedward
1531 confirms this. 15
The King- spelling, by the way, does not represent
the modern regional
pronunciation
which is Kineddart. 16 Despite demonstrable re-interpretation
of their written forms, in terms of the lexicon of the
recipient
language,
Langbryd and King Edward have not undergone
any
morphological
restructuring; the two original components are still
separated
as before although they now function differently within
the
new
compound name. In the name Kinghorn FIF we encounter
a
further
step: Its final -g in King- was originally the initial letter
of the
second
element -gorn (Kingorn c. 1128). Although there are a couple
of
sporadic
spellings in -horn(e) around 1300, the new spelling is not
found
until
the second half of the sixteenth century, as in Kinghorne
1561. In
this new
form which still prevails today, the syllabic boundary has
been
shifted
from Kin- and -gorn to King- and -horn(e) as a direct result
of
secondary
semantic reinterpretation. 17 That this is a process
not
confined
to names which have experienced a change from -n to
-ng
spellings,
is dramatically demonstrated by the Dumfriesshire
name
Closeburn
which started life as Gaelic Kylosbern 1200 "Osbern's
church"18
but is Closbern in 1470, Closebarn in 1506-7, and Closeburne
in 1594
(all RMS); and there are several other examples of this
process
which
seems to have happened particularly at the interface of Scots
(or,
at the
very least, Northern English) and Gaelic during the
three
centuries
which have our special attention.
As the
selective evidence so far paraded confirms, there was plenty
of
action and interaction - phonological, morphological, semantic
- during
the period
1300-1600 wherever speakers of Scots and Gaelic encountered
each other,
lived among each other, and, under the peculiar angle
at
which
we are looking at the scene, shared information about
the names
of places
with each other. The problem is that hardly any of
this
toponymic
evidence is eminently mappable. What one would really
like
to construct,
in order to have a proper grip on the questions which
prompted
this paper, is a series of maps showing what happened
when
where.
In particular, one would like to know at what time Scots
place
names
first appeared in the various locations and what they
were like
but in
order to do this rigorously and with conviction, several
years of
systematic
possibly even comprehensive, examination of the relevant
sources
would be required. I am sure that such a task could
be
accomplished
but I am also sure that such an undertaking is more
the
work
of a PhD student than of an active university teacher
nearing
retirement.
What I want to do by way of compromise therefore are
two
things:
- first, present what evidence we have for the addition of
Scots
place
names to a Gaelic place nomenclature (including the names
the
Gaels
themselves had inherited from the Picts and others) in two
places
for which
such information has been incidentally but accessibly
gathered;
- and, second, do a close reading of an onomastic text in a
quest
for helpful
clues as to the nature of the interaction in a definable region.
For
the first investigation, the two places I have in mind
are the
counties of West Lothian and Aberdeenshire for
which Angus Mac-
and William Alexander, respectively,
published place-name
several decades ago, one in 1941, 19 the other
in 1952. 20 It might
be instructive to see how two such counties differ, one
on the fringe of
what was once Gaelic-speaking Scotland, the other in
the very heart of
it. In West Lothian, according to Macdonald, the
earliest recorded
name is Livingston which appears as Uilla Leuing
between 1124
and 1152; also mentioned in twelfth-century documents
are four other
names, Philpingstone, Liston, Winchburgh, and Blackness.
The thirteenth
century first records eight further names:
Duddingston a. 1219,
Balderston 1296, Humbie 1290-1, Illieston c.
1200, Hiltly 1296,
Riccarton, Wrae 1296, and Whitburn; whereas
fourteenth-century
records add thirteen names: Queensferry, Hawthornsyke,
Mannerston,
Newton, Borrowston, Stacks, Kirkliston, Bonnytoun,
Preston, Williamcraigs,
Houston, Blackburn, and Cousland. In fifteenth-century
documents
we first find the following eighteen names:
Plewlands, Scotstoun,
Brownlaws, Craigton, Midhope, Philpstoun,
Grange, Waterstone,
Kingsfield, Parkly, Porterside, Woodcockdale, Couston,
Deans, Wheatacres
Blackburn Mains, Cowhill and Foulshiels. It is
worth noting that,
apart from some names of natural features, practically
all the early
names, i.e. those recorded before 1300, indicate
ownership of a
settlement; it is only in the century which follows
that toponymic
references to agricultural activities come ill. Even
bearing in mind the
vagaries of transmission, a total of forty-three names
from before 1500 is,
it seems, surprisingly small, considering the linguistic
status of that part
of the Lothians. It is only in the sixteenth century
that names of English
origin are added to or replace existing Gaelic
place names in large
numbers, and then with the full flavour of Scottishness
expressed in their
written forms; a few examples are: Bankheid,
Brigend, Braidmyre,
Burnshot, Craigbay, Mylntoun, Scottistoun, Langcragrige,
Stanefauldhill,
The Langhauch, Gaitsyde, Breistmyln, Hanyng,
Quhitlaw, and
Mekyll Brighous.
Two comments come to mind:
- (i) these names are
recorded considerably later than one would have
expected, and
additional caution should therefore be urged when
one tries to equate
the beginning of linguistic influence with the earliest
record of place
names. The delay cannot be explained solely as the result
of the belated
documentation for such names although obviously
this may have played some part.
- (ii), these names almost exclusively
belong to the micro-toponymy
of the county. It seems to have been difficult
therefore for
Scots names to infiltrate decisively the nomenclature
of important
places; the vernacular toponymy is not only late
but additional and
interspersed, not replacive.
As is to be expected, the picture which Alexander
provides for
Aberdeenshire is somewhat different: 21 Only one
name is mentioned in
the twelfth century, the piscaria de Croves in the
parish of Old Machar
in 1157;
two are first recorded in the thirteenth century, Heatherwick
and Newburgh
(as Latin Novum Burgum in 1261, and another four by
1400, Blacktoun
(King Edward), Blackwater (St. Fergus), Collyhill
(Bourtie),
and Craigton (Cruden or Logie Buchan) - a total of seven!
As
far as the
place names of Aberdeenshire can tell us, the Scotticisation
of
that county,
with the exception of urban Aberdeen, perhaps, is therefore
decidedly
post-mediaeval (and much later than that in its western
parts).
In the course of a little bit of wishful thinking the thought
occurs
that it would
be nice to have similar place-name surveys of Fife, Angus,
and the Mearns
to fill the gap. Without them, the hunch has to be that
the number
of early references to Scots place names in those counties
is
bound to
decrease gradually the further north one moves.
And thus,
finally, our onomastic text! (p.33) It is not atypical although
probably
a little better than most in the density of its material. It
comes
from a source
basic to all historical place-name research in Scotland, the
Register of the Great Seal. 22
It deals with an area of great interest
to
anybody
studying the interface between Gaelic and Scots between
1300
and 1600
- Fife; and its date, 1452, embedded in a confirmation charter
of 1480,
is right in the middle of that period and in that century
which
has already
emerged several times as significant in the shaping of
the
place names
of Scotland as we know them. It is therefore the kind
of
source a
name scholar must make the most of in most of
his
undertakings.
What kind of messages does it have for us on this
occasion?
All the 110 place names in its central section follow
Scots
rather than
Gaelic spelling conventions and presumably also reflect
Scots pronunciations.
They form a Scots or Scottish English toponymic
text but
only 39 of these 110 names show Scots lexical influence,
18 as
complete
names and 21 as modifications of Gaelic names. In the
first
group 5
(Bonyngtoune, Gilmortoune, Wilkynstone, Greigstone,
Freretoune) imply,
perhaps new, ownership, one possibly by a Gael, Gilmore;
3 (Newgrange,
Neutoune, Newmyll) speak of new settlement and
farming activities,
and the rest (Byrehill, Fauside, Langraw, le Hache,
Bynns, Urwell,
Muretoune, Myretoune, and Burchle) either designate
natural features
or settlement in less desirable locations. As a group,
these are
newcomers' or late settlers' place names, probably
of
comparatively
recent origin and undoubtedly additional to the existing
Gaelic place
nomenclature, represented by 71 names in the central
portion of
the charter.
This impression
is strengthened by the 21 other names in which the
Scots elements
appear as modifying components, either using directional
terminology
(suthir-northir, estyr-westyr, uvir-nethir, mydil-westyr),
proprietorship
(Lambeis vs. Priouris, or Pziouris vs. Chawmeris), or
reference
to topographical features (Murecambosse, Levynnis-brig,
Crag-fudy,
Kirkland de Luchris, Muretone-in-Luchris, Cragroyihill).
Apart from Levynnis-brig and Craigroyihill, this is a nomenclature of secondary subdivision
of an existing settlement pattern. There is
continuation
here but on a smaller scale; it is a toponymic landscape
that accommodates
largely through partition and division rather than
replacement.
About 1450, then, or perhaps a decade or two ear
Scots component
in the names of property belonging to the church at St.
Andrews is
still discernibly secondary and additional, and integrated
only by its
acceptance and acquisition of already existing names and
their modification
in response to new circumstances. What it echoes is a
fuller, more
cluttered landscape - more people in more settlements, most
of them smaller
and in less desirable locations. The remaining names
listed in this
confirmation charter support this picture.
There is
clearly scope here for many similar interrogations
of
comparable
texts but that cannot be our task in this context. Let
me
therefore
introduce only another three texts which should prove
instructive
in comparison. They come from Moray (1451), Cowal (1472)
and Kirriemuir (1510), the first from the Moray Register 23 the other two
from the Register of the Great Seal. 24 The Moray charter contains
63
names, of which
only two can be called Scots, in the Cowal text of 23
names none
is Scots, either fully or partially, but the Kirriemuir (Angus)
list has 18
names out of 60 that are either fully or partially Scots.
The
onomastic,
and ultimately also the linguistic, implications are obvious.
Texts like
these, I have no doubt, are likely to remain our chief sources
for the kind
of evidence we are seeking, and we are fortunate insofar
as
they are quite
plentiful for the three centuries which interest us. For a
trained eye
they soon become a rough and ready guide to the linguistic
flavour and
composition of the nomenclatures contained in them, and
closer and
more sustained readings by experts should yield useful
results. They
not only provide us with examples of the various processes
that Gaelic
names undergo when they are adopted and adapted
by
Scots; they
also, when properly interrogated, inform us about the Scots
additions to
the acquired onomasticon, as long as they are taken for
what they
are - names and not words - and as long as potential
interference
factors such as a delay between the naming of a feature and
the recording
of that name, or between linguistic and onomastic
presence, are
taken into account. When all is said and done, it has to
be
admitted that
there is considerable place-name evidence to throw light
on the interface
between Gaelic and Scots during the period 1300-1600.
It is not so
much a question of finding it but of knowing what to make
of it.
NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Nicolaisen, W. F. H. (1959): "Scottish Place-names: 10. The Type
'Burn of-' in Scottish Hydronymy." Scottish Studies 3, 92-102.
- (1960): "Scottish Place-names 15. Names Containing the Preposition 'of."
Scottish Studies 4, 194-205. - (1965): "Scottish Place- names:
25. 'Hill of- and 'Loch of-'." Scottish Studies 9,
175-182. - See also Nicolaisen, W. F. H. (1976)- Scottish Place-Names:
Their Study and Significance. London: B. T. Batsford, 56-64.
2. Nicolaisen, W. F. H. (1986): "Gaelic
Place Names in Scots."
Scottish Language 5 (Winter 1986), 14.0-146,
esp. 142-143.
3. Nicolaisen, W. F. H. (1989,): "The
Spelling of Scottish Place
Names as a Linguistic Resource."
In Other Words. Festschrift
H. H. Meier. Eds. J. L. Mackenzie and
R. Todd (Dordrecht,
Holland: Foris, 1989, 301-314).
4. The county abbreviations used here are
those employed by the
Scottish Place-Name Survey of the School of
Scottish Studies. For a
listing of them see Nicolaisen (1976), xxvii-xxviii.
5. See note 1.
6. See note 2.
7. Nicolaisen, W. F. H. (1975): "Place
Names in Bilingual Communities." Names 23, 167-174; see also Nicolaisen
(1976), 53-56.
8. Nicolaisen (1986), 142.
9. Ibid., 143.
10. Ibid., 144.
11. Registrum Magni Sigilii Regum Scotorum.
Vol. IV (A.D. 1546-1580). Ed. John Maitland Thomson. Edinburgh:
H.M. Register
House, 1886.
12. Nicolaisen, W. F. H. (1970): "Gaelic
Place-Names in Southern
Scotland." Studia Celtica 5, 15-35; also
Nicolaisen (1976), 141-143, and Nicolaisen (1986), 143-144.
13. For a general account of such names see
Nicolaisen, W. F. H.
(1987): "Semantic Causes of Structural
Changes in Place-Names."
NORNA-rapporter 34, 9-18.
14. See p. 23 and note 3.
15. Nicolaisen (1987), 14.
16. Alexander, William M. (1952): The Place-Names
of Aberdeenshire. Aberdeen: Third Spalding Club, 76.
17. Nicolaisen (1987), 15-16.
18. Ibid., 16.
19. Macdonald, Angus (1941): The Place-Names
of West Lothian.
Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd.
20. See note 16.
21. See note 16.
22. Registrum Magni Sigilii Regum Scotorum.
Vol. 11 (1424-1513).
Ed. James Balfour Paul. Edinburgh: H.M.
Register House, 1882,
no. 1444.
23. Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis. Edinbrugh:
Bannatyne Club,
1837, pp. 223-225.
24M. RMS (1424-1513), nos. 1059 and 3489.
State University of New York at Binghamton.
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