UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Celtic and Gaelic
Part of the Faculty of Arts
Home > departments > Celtic and Gaelic > Our Staff > Dr Simon Taylor

Simon Taylor MA ( St Andrews), Ph.D. (Edinburgh), FSAScot.

 

I currently hold 2 posts in the University of Glasgow:

(1) 0.5 within Celtic & Gaelic, School of Humanities: Researcher on AHRC STIT Project
(2) 0.5 within Celtic & Gaelic, School of Humanities, and English Language, School of Critical Studies: Research and Teaching Associate in Scottish Onomastics.

Contact: simon.taylor@glasgow.ac.uk

Co-editor of Journal of Scottish Name Studies

Research interests

  • place-names as historical and linguistic evidence
  • early medieval insular history
  • the cult of saints

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

Books

  • The Anderson Century:100 Years of Medieval Scottish Scholarship 1903–2002, St Andrews 2004 (the first Anderson Memorial Lecture, given February 2003).
  • Place-Names of Fife Vol. 1 ( West Fife between Leven and Forth) (with Gilbert Márkus), (Donington 2006) [volume 1 of a 5 volume series].
  • Place-Names of Fife Vol. 2 (Central Fife between the Rivers Leven and Eden) (with Gilbert Márkus), (Donington 2008) [volume 2 of a 5 volume series].
  • Place-Names of Fife Vol. 3 (St Andrews and the East Neuk) (with Gilbert Márkus), (Donington 2009) [volume 3 of a 5 volume series; contains an edition and translation of St Andrews Foundation Account B and the Augustinian’s Account].
  • Place-Names of Fife Vol. 4 (North Fife between Eden and Tay) (with Gilbert Márkus), (Donington 2010) [volume 4 of a 5 volume series].
  • Place-Names of Fife Vol. 5 (Discussion, Elements Glossaries, Edited texts, etc) (with Gilbert Márkus), (Donington forthcoming) [final volume of a 5 volume series].

Edited Books

  • The Uses of Place-Names ( Edinburgh 1998); including chapters by G. W. S. Barrow, M. Gelling, D. Meek and R. Ó Maolalaigh.
  • Kings, Clerics and Chronicles in Scotland 500–1297 (Dublin 2000); a Festschrift in honour of Dr Marjorie O. Anderson to celebrate her 90th birthday; including chapters by D. Broun, D. Dumville, A. A. M. Duncan, I. Henderson, M. Herbert, R. Sharpe.
  • West Over Sea : Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement before 1300, edd. Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Williams (Leiden and Boston 2007): a Festschrift in honour of Dr Barbara E. Crawford.

Editions of Texts
  • The Anglo-Saxon ChronicleMS B ( Cambridge 1983) [vol. 4 of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a collaborative edition, general edd. D. Dumville and S. Keynes].
  • Bower’s Scotichronicon Books ix and x (and D. E. R. Watt, with Brian Scot) ( Aberdeen 1990) [vol. 5 of Bower’s Scotichronicon, general ed. D. E. R. Watt].

Articles in academic journals

  • 'Some Early Scottish Place-Names and Queen Margaret', Scottish Language no. 13 (1994), 1-17
  • ‘Babbet and Bridin Pudding or Polyglot Fife in the Middle Ages’, Nomina 17 (1994), 99–118.
  • ‘Generic Element Variation, with special reference to eastern Scottish place-names’ Nomina 20 (1997), 5–22.
  • ‘The medieval marches of Wester Kinnear, Kilmany parish, Fife’ (and J. M. Henderson), Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal 4 (1998), 232–47.
  • ‘A sculptured fragment from Pittensorn Farm, Gellyburn, Perthshire’ (and Mark Hall and Isabel Henderson), Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal 4 (1998), 129–44 [my section on place-names of the area of the find, 139–41]
  • 'Place-names and the early church in Scotland’, Records of Scottish Church History Society 28 (1998), 1–22.
  • ‘Columba east of Drumalban: some aspects of the cult of Columba in eastern Scotland’, Innes Review 51 (2) (2000), 109–30.
  • ‘The Southern Frontier of Norse Settlement in North Scotland: Place-Names and History’ (with Barbara E. Crawford), Northern Scotland 23 (2003), 1–76
  • ‘ Sliabh in Scottish Place-Names: its meaning and chronology’, Journal of Scottish Name Studies 1 (2007). 99-136 
  • Place-names of Lesmahagow’, Journal of Scottish Name Studies 3 (2009), 65–106.
  • ‘Bibliography [of Scottish Name-Studies] 2006-2009’, Journal of Scottish Name Studies 4 (2010), 173-86.
  • 'Pitmiclardie in Fife', (with Robert Henery), Journal of Scottish Name Studies 1 (2007), 148-50

Chapters in Edited Books

  • 'The Scandinavians in Fife and Kinross: the Onomastic Evidence', Scandinavia Settlement in Norrthern Britain, ed. B.E. Crawford (Leicester University Press 1995), 141-67.
  • ‘Place-names and the Early Church in Eastern Scotland’, Scotland in Dark Age Britain, ed. B.E. Crawford ( Aberdeen 1996), 93–110.
  • ‘Seventh-century Iona abbots in Scottish place-names’, in Spes Scotorum Hope of the Scots, edd. D. Broun and T. O. Clancy ( Edinburgh 1999), 35–70 [revised version of ‘Seventh-century Iona abbots in Scottish place-names’, Innes Review 48 no. 1 (Spring 1997), 45–72]
  • ‘The coming of the Augustinians to St Andrews and version B of the St Andrews’ foundation legend’ in Kings, Clerics and Chronicles in Scotland 500–1297, ed. Simon Taylor (Dublin 2000), 115–23.
  • ‘Place-Names of Fife’, in The Fife Book ed. D. Omand (Edinburgh 2000), 205–20.
  • ‘The Cult of St Fillan in Scotland’, in The North Sea World: Studies in a Medieval Context, edd. T. R. Liszka and L. E. M. Walker (Dublin 2001), 175–210.
  • ‘Pont and Place-Names’ (with R. Wentworth), in The Nation Survey’d, ed. I. Cunningham (East Linton 2001), 55–76.
  • ‘Scandinavians in central Scotland: bý-place-names and their context’, in Sagas, Saints and Settlements, edd. Gareth Williams and Paul Bibire ( Leiden, Netherlands 2004), 125–45.
  • ‘Place-Names in the Historical Landscape: Changing Land Use in The Howe Of Fife’, in Landscape and Environment (in Dark Age Scotland), ed. Alex Woolf (St Andrews 2006), 75–90.
  • ‘The Early History and Languages of West Dunbartonshire’, in Changing identities: ancient roots - the history of West Dunbartonshire from earliest times, ed. Ian Brown (Edinburgh University Press 2006), 12–41.
  • ‘The Rock Of The Irishmen: An Early Place-Name Tale From Fife And Kinross’, in West Over Sea : Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement before 1300, edd. Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Williams (Leiden and Boston 2007), 497–514.
  • 'Gaelic in Glasgow: the onomastic evidence’, in Glasgow, City of the Gael / Glaschu, Baile Mòr nan Gàidheal, ed. Sheila Kidd ( Glasgow 2007).
  • ‘The toponymic landscape of the Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer’, in Studies on the Book of Deer, ed. Katherine Forsyth (Dublin 2008), 275–308.
  • 'Pilkembare and Pluc the Craw: verbal plce-names in Scotland', in A Cmmodity of Good Names, eds. O.J. Padel and D. Parsons (Donington 2008), 274-85
  • ‘The Trenches at Falkland, Fife: a Legacy of Royal Deer-management?’, in Carmarthenshire & Beyond: Studies in History and Archaeology in Memory of Terry James, edd. Heather James and Patricia Moore (Carmarthenshire Antiquarian Society, Carmarthen 2009), 235–44.
  • ‘Pictish place-names revisited’, in Pictish Progress: New Studies on Northern Britain in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Stephen T. Driscoll, Jane Geddes and Mark A. Hall (Leiden and Boston [Brill], 2011), 67-118.
  • ‘Placename Studies in Scotland and The Onomasticon’, in Edmund Hogan’s Onomasticon Goedelicum (1910-2010): Reconsiderations, ed. Kevin Murray and Pádraig Ó Riain (Irish Texts Society) 103-16.
  • "‘StronPatnaHachalas or the Oxterhill’: place-names and language-contact in the Beauly area, Inverness-shire", in the proceedings of ‘Them and Us’ conference, University of Melbourne, Australia, August 2006 (forthcoming).
  • ‘Scottish Place-Names’, in the proceedings of ‘Place-names in the Celtic Countries’, Celtic Congress/An Chomhdháil Cheilteach conference, Sligo, Ireland, July 2009 (Celtic Congress, forthcoming).
  • ‘St Andrew and Scotland’ in the proceedings of the ‘Congresso Internazionale Teatro Religioso e Comunità Alpine’, Susa, Italy, October 2010 (forthcoming).

Fiction

  • Mortimer’s Deep, Nairn 1992 (historical novel set in Scotland c.1200); German edition (hard-back) Munich 1994; (paperback Goldmann, Munich 1996; Knaur, Munich 2003).

Entries in Encyclopaedias and Reference Works

  • Entry on Scottish Place-Names in Oxford Companion to Scottish History, gen. ed. Michael Lynch (Oxford 2001), 479–84.
  • Entry on Scottish Place-Names in Celtic Culture: An Encyclopedia, ed. John T. Koch 5 vols ( Santa Barbara, USA 2006).

Other

  • Introduction (with corrigenda, some addenda and a full W. J. Watson bibliography) of Birlinn re-issue of W. J. Watson’s History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (1926), 2004, vii–xxix.
  • Beauly, The Aird and Strathglass Place-Name Survey (North-East Inverness-shire), containing place-name data (early forms, analysis etc) collected for the AHRB Norse-Gaelic Frontier Project 2000 to 2001; available on http://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/beauly/
  • ‘Ayrshire Place-Names: a rich seam still to mine’, Ayrshire Notes 38 (Autumn 2009), 4–18. 
  • ‘Knowing Your Place’: A Place-Name Walk in Aberdour , Simon Taylor, in conjunction with Fife Council (University of Glasgow 2011).
  • ‘Knowing Your Place’: A Place-Name Walk in Markinch Simon Taylor, in conjunction with the Markinch Heritage Group and Fife Council (University of Glasgow 2011).

History Scotland Articles

  • 'Reading the Map: Understanding Scottish Place-Names', HS vol. 2 no1. (Jan/Feb 2002), 13
  • ‘Norse in the Islands’, HS vol. 2 no. 2 (March/April 2002), 42–5.
  • ‘Place-names and the Changing Landscape: The Howe of Fife, a Case Study’, HS vol. 2 no. 3 (May/June 2002), 49–51.
  • ‘Stormont, the name and the place’, HS vol. 2 no. 5 (September/October 2002), 44–7.
  • ‘The Element sliabh and the Rhinns of Galloway: or Place-Names and History: a Case Study’, HS vol. 2 no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 2002), 49–52.
  • ‘Lickerstane: meanings and myths’, HS vol. 3 no. 2 (March/April 2003), 49–52.
  • ‘Place-names and Archaeology’, HS vol. 3 no. 6 (November/December 2003), 50–3.
  • 'Celtic Place-Names of Clackmannanshire’, HS vol. 4 no. 4 (July/August, 2004), 13–17.
  • ‘The Abernethy Foundation Account & its Place-Names’, HS vol. 5 no. 4 (July/August 2005), 14–16.

Additional Information

Vice-chair of Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba/Gaelic Place-Names of Scotland.