Humans have always had a fascination with the origins and meanings of place-names, a fascination which in our own civilisation we can trace at least as far back as the Old Testament. The systematic study of place-names in Scotland goes back several centuries, and this lecture will introduce some key figures in its evolution. The lecture will conclude with an overview of the present state of the discipline and its future trajectory.

Place-names are important, sometimes unique, witnesses to the historical languages of Scotland and the ways in which these languages interacted with each other. This lecture will look both at the languages themselves and at their interaction, from a socio-political as well as from a linguistic perspective. It will also address the issue of dating the different linguistic strata and of assigning names to a particular language.

Place-names illuminate many aspects of social history, including settlement, assembly, hunting and the administration of justice. This lecture will discuss some of these aspects of social history through the close analysis of representative place-names from across Scotland, above all those coined in the medieval and early modern periods.

The focus of this lecture will be place-names’ relationship with archaeology and environmental history. It will explore how place-names can be sign-posts for the archaeologist, as well as indicators of how people through the ages have interpreted visible archaeological remains. Place-names also invoke and describe past landscapes reaching back into the medieval period. They are especially valuable as witnesses to early woodland and wetland and their exploitation, as well as to the former distribution of birds and animals.

The early story of Christianity in Scotland is inscribed not just in its manuscripts and stones but also in its place-names. This lecture will look at some key place-name elements associated with the Church and attempt to tease out from them something of that early story. It will also look at another marker of the historical importance of religion, that of the legion of saints commemorated in our namescape.

Place-names arise from humans’ creative engagement with their environment, so it is no surprise that they embody a wide range of human responses: prosaic, utilitarian, imaginative, evaluative, humorous, mocking. There is also scarcely anything too small to be given a name, and these so-called microtoponyms can be found in sources from medieval boundary descriptions to modern colloquial language. There is also a lively movement of place-names across the globe, driven by a variety of motivations, both positive and negative. All the above types of names are found in Scotland, and they will provide the focus of this final lecture.