Margaret Gelling

Posted on | May 25, 2009 | No Comments

The Economist has an obituary of Margaret Gelling, an expert on English place names.

She was a neat, keen, merry woman, “prissy” as she described herself, and sensibly shod and clad. The gear was appropriate for slopping through slæp, fenn, myrr and slohtre (the disappointing origin of Upper and Lower Slaughter), or stomping through leah, hurst, holt and græfe, where trees were felled and coppiced and axes rang in the woods.

I first came across her work when I lived in London, trying to decypher some amusing Tube Station names.

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