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Professor emeritus of Onomastics Richard Coates' Outputs (31)

An etymology for campshed (2023)
Journal Article

The Oxford English Dictionary [OED] defines this word as follows: ‘[a] facing of piles and boarding along the bank of a river, or at the side of an embankment, to protect the bank from the action of the current, or to resist the out-thrust of the emb... Read More about An etymology for campshed.

Fetlar (2019)
Journal Article

This article rehearses the history of attempts to account for the name of the island of Fetlar in Shetland. It is concluded that explaining it as pre-Celtic is beset with philological difficulties, and that it is probably, after all, Scandinavian, th... Read More about Fetlar.

Meaningfulness in literary naming within the framework of The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP) (2018)
Journal Article

This paper develops ideas originally floated in the Journal of Literary Onomastics 4 (2015) particularly concerning the genesis of “meaningful” or “cratylic” names for characters, so-called “sprechende/redende Namen”. I argue that literary naming fal... Read More about Meaningfulness in literary naming within the framework of The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP).

The meaning of names: A response in defence of The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP) addressed to Van Langendonck, Anderson, Colman and McClure (2017)
Journal Article

In a number of interrelated articles, I have presented some ideas about the nature of proper names, and specifically about their meaning. A central concept of these papers has been subjected to criticism, I believe inappropriately, by several scholar... Read More about The meaning of names: A response in defence of The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP) addressed to Van Langendonck, Anderson, Colman and McClure.

Welsh Lloegr 'England' (2017)
Journal Article

A new etymology is proposed for this controversial name, suggesting a Germanic origin.

Oundle, Northamptonshire (2014)
Journal Article

The name of Oundle, noted earliest as the death-place of St Wilfrid and later of St Cett, and as the burial-place of archbishop Wulfstan of York, has not received a fully satisfactory explanation, despite a wealth of early mentions.

Wirral revisited (2013)
Journal Article

This article has two goals. The first is to document fully the recurrent English place-name Wirral and a number of similar ones which can be shown, in some cases definitely, in others probably or possibly, to have the same origin, as well as others w... Read More about Wirral revisited.