This course invites students to engage critically with current issues in name studies. Topics covered include the origins and development of names of places and of people in England and Scotland, the special properties of names as lexical items, and the function of names in contemporary discourse and literature. The course focuses in particular on the contribution onomastics can make to historical, demographic, literary and linguistic studies.

2-hour weekly seminars for 10 weeks as scheduled on MyCampus.

This is one of the MSc options in English Language and Linguistics, and may not run every year. The options that are running this session are available on MyCampus.

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An article review (1000 words) worth 25%

An essay or project (3500 words) worth 75%

This course aims to:

- provide an overview of different areas of name studies

- facilitate a critical understanding of a range of approaches and methodologies

- familiarise students with the main research tools

- provide a framework within which students can undertake research into place-names, personal names, literary onomastics or onomastic theory.

By the end of this course students should be able to:

- use the analytic tools needed to study a special topic in onomastics

- analyse a body of data relevant to the topic 

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.