Dr David Parsons MA, PhD

Reader

Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS)

Tel: 01970 636543
Email: d.parsons@cymru.ac.uk

Role in the University

Academic research, project leadership

Background

David Parsons works on the vernacular languages of medieval Britain, particularly as revealed by place-names. He is currently writing the English Place-Name Society’s volume on the hundred of Oswestry in north-west Shropshire, an area where the Welsh language flourished until modern times.

He has recently completed a separate monograph on some medieval sources for this fascinating linguistic border zone. Other current projects include articles on the interplay of Norse, English, Gaelic and British (Cumbric) in north-west England; on the survival of Latin as a spoken language in post-Roman Britain; on the evidence of place-names for the medieval church in England and Wales; and on the early medieval inscriptions of south-western Scotland.

He also directs a project on the ‘Cult of Saints in Wales’, which is gradually publishing a range of edited texts of prose and poetry, in Latin and in Welsh, from medieval Wales, together with much subsidiary information on the saints and their veneration.

David is Director of the ‘Survey of English Place-Names’, the longest-established research project supported by the British Academy. He sits on the committees of the Academy’s ‘Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture’ and of the Welsh Place-Name Society. He is editor of the name-studies journal Nomina.

He was formerly Director of the Institute for Name-Studies at the University of Nottingham, moving to the Centre in February 2009.

Publications

Books and Pamphlets

Welsh and English in Medieval Oswestry: The Evidence of Place-Names (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2021, at press)
Warning: May Contain Saints. Place-Names as Evidence for the Church in Early Wales (Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic & Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge, 2019)
Martyrs and Memorials: Merthyr Place-Names and the Church in Early Wales (Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2013)
with Paul Cullen and Richard Jones, Thorps in a Changing Landscape, Explorations in Local and Regional History, 4 (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire, 2011)
with Jayne Carroll, Anglo-Saxon Mint-Names (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2007)
The Vocabulary of English Place-Names: Ceafor–Cock-pit (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2004)
with Tania Styles, The Vocabulary of English Place-Names: Brace–Cæster (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2000)
Recasting the Runes: The Reform of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (Uppsala: Institutionen för Nordiska Språk, Uppsala Universitet, 1999)
with Tania Styles, The Vocabulary of English Place-Names: Á–Box (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 1997)

Edited volumes and Articles, etc.

with Jayne Carroll (eds.), Perceptions of Place: Twenty-First-Century Interpretations of English Place-Name Studies (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2013)
with Oliver Padel (eds.), A Commodity of Good Names: Essays in Honour of Margaret Gelling (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2008)
with John Higgitt and Katherine Forsyth (eds.), Roman, Runes and Ogham: Medieval Inscriptions in the Insular World and on the Continent (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002)
with James Graham-Campbell, Richard Hall and Judith Jesch (eds.), Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2001)
with Patrick Sims-Williams (eds.), Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas of the Earliest Celtic Place-Names of Europe (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2000)
(ed.) R. I. Page, Runes and Runic Inscriptions: Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Runes (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995)
Contributions on inscriptions to Jane Hawkes and Philip Sidebottom, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, xiii, Derbyshire and Staffordshire (Oxford: OUP, 2018)
Contributions on inscriptions to Paul Everson and David Stocker, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, xii, Nottinghamshire (Oxford: OUP, 2016)
‘Welsh legal terminology in Oswestry’, Welsh Place-Name Society Newsletter, 9 (Spring 2016), 11–12
‘Pre-English river-names and British survival in Shropshire’, Nomina, 36 (2015), 1–19
‘Churls and athelings, kings and reeves: some reflections on place-names and early English society’, in Carroll and Parsons (eds.), Perceptions of Place (2013), pp. 43–72
Contributions on inscriptions to Nancy Edwards, A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales, iii, North Wales (Cardiff: UWP, 2013)
Contributions on inscriptions to Richard Bryant, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, x, The Western Midlands (Oxford: OUP, 2012)
‘On the origin of “Hiberno-Norse inversion-compounds” ’, Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 5 (2011), 131–68
‘Sabrina in the thorns: place-names as evidence for British and Latin in Roman Britain’, Transactions of the Philological Society, 109 (2011), 113–37
, Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon Hoard symposium, British Museum (2010); available online on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website:
‘Tracking the course of the savage tongue: place-names and linguistic diffusion in early Britain’, in Barry Cunliffe and John T. Koch (eds.), Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeology, Genetics, Language and Literature (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), pp. 169–84
Contributions on inscriptions to Richard Bailey, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, ix, Cheshire and Lancashire (Oxford: OUP, 2010)
with Richard Jones and Paul Cullen, ‘Thorps and the open fields: a new hypothesis from England’, in Peder Dam et al. (eds.), Torp som ortnamn och bebyggelse (Lund: Institutet för Språk och Folkminnen, 2009), pp. 55–76
Contributions on inscriptions to Elizabeth Coatworth, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, viii, Western Yorkshire (Oxford: OUP, 2008)
‘Field-name statistics, Norfolk and the Danelaw’, in Peder Gammeltoft and Bent Jørgensen (eds.), Names through the Looking-Glass (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 2006), pp. 165–88
with Lesley Abrams, ‘Place-names and the history of Scandinavian settlement in England’, in John Hines et al. (eds.), Land, Sea and Home (Leeds: Maney, 2004), pp. 379–431
‘A note on herrings in place-names’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 36 (2004), 83–5
‘The inscriptions of Viking-Age York’, in R.A. Hall et al. (eds.), Aspects of Anglo-Scandinavian York (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2004), pp. 350–6
‘Ellough: a pagan Viking temple in Suffolk?’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 35 (2003), 25–30
‘Anna, Dot, Thorir … counting Domesday personal names’, Nomina, 25 (2002), 29–52
‘Old English *��ō��, dialect loot, a salt-maker’s “ladle” ’, in Carole Hough and Kathryn A. Lowe (eds.), ‘Lastworda Betst’: Essays in Memory of Christine E. Fell with her Unpublished Writings (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2002), pp. 170–88
Contributions on inscriptions to James Lang, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, vi, Northern Yorkshire (Oxford: OUP, 2002)
‘How long did the Scandinavian language survive in England? Again’, in James Graham-Campbell et al. (eds.), Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2001), pp. 299–312
‘Classifying Ptolemy’s English place-names’, in Parsons and Sims-Williams (eds.), Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas, pp. 169–78
Contributions on inscriptions to Paul Everson and David Stocker, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, v, Lincolnshire (Oxford: OUP, 1999)
‘Byrhtferth and the runes of Oxford, St John’s College, manuscript 17’, in Klaus Düwel (ed.), Runenschriften als Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1998), pp. 439–47
‘British *�䲹��ī��ǲ�, Old English Cerdic’, CMCS, 33 (Summer 1997), 1–8
‘The language of the Anglo-Saxon settlers’, in Hans Frede Nielsen and Lene Schløsler (eds.), The Origins and Development of Emigrant Languages (Odense: Odense University Press, 1996), pp. 141–56
‘The origins and chronology of the “Anglo-Frisian” additional runes’, in Tineke Looijenga and Arend Quak (eds.), Frisian Runes and Neighbouring Traditions (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 151–70
with Tania Styles, ‘Birds in amber: the nature of English place-name elements’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 28 (1995–6), 5–31
Contributions on inscriptions to Dominic Tweddle, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, iv, South-East England (Oxford: OUP, 1995)
‘Anglo-Saxon runes in Continental manuscripts’, in Klaus Düwel (ed.), Runische Schriftkultur in kontinental-skandinavischer und ‑angelsächsischer Wechselbeziehung (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1994), pp. 195–220
‘Sandwich: the oldest Scandinavian rune-stone in England?’, in Björn Ambrosiani and Helen Clarke (eds.), The Twelfth Viking Congress (Stockholm: Birka Project for Riksantikvarieämbetet and Statens Historiska Museer, 1994), pp. 310–20
‘German runes in Kent?’, Nytt om Runer, 7 (1992), 7–8
‘New Runic finds from Brandon, Suffolk’, Nytt om Runer, 6 (1991), 8–11

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