Margaret Gelling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009) |
Margaret Gelling, OBE (29 November 1924 – 24 April 2009) was an English toponymist, Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, and member of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the British Academy.
She was formerly the President of the English Place-Name Society. She was the author, co-author or editor of numerous books, several which have become standard works in the field of toponymy and which include the English Place-Name Society surveys of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Shropshire, and a lecturer likewise on place names at the universities of Birmingham (Edgbaston), annually at Oxford, and in the past periodically at various international meetings.
She was a sometime member of an expedition to Peru devoted to investigating the history of potato use including freeze-drying at altitude. Consequently, she became experienced at cooking over a fire of dried llama dung in a cave.
Her most publicly visible and accessible books are Signposts to the Past, 3rd edn (Chichester: Phillimore, 2000), first published in 1978 and, with Ann Cole, The Landscape of Place-names (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000, reprinted in 2003; ISBN 1-900289-26-1), based on her earlier work, Place-names in the Landscape (London: Dent, 1984).
The Landscape of Place-Names is a reference to settlement names of the type which define a settlement by reference to a landscape feature, as found in Britain south of the Forth–Clyde line.
Gelling established the relationship between Anglo-Saxon names and the landscape; for example the Anglo-Saxons had about forty words that can describe hills, but these are mostly regarded as synonyms in modern English. In those times, the distinction between a knoll and a creech could be a very important navigational direction.
She was married to the University of Birmingham archaeologist, Peter Gelling.
[edit] External links
- Interview with her in British Archaeology
- Biography of Dr Gelling
- Obituary by Nicholas Brooks in the Guardian, Monday 4th May 2009
- Margaret Gelling-Daily Telegraph obituary
- Margaret Gelling, obituary in The Economist (14 May 2009).
