Notes on Some Scottish Field Names

AbstractA number offield names identified during the 1940s in surveys of the place names of southeast Scotland could not at that time convincingly be explained. Some, however, have doublets or close parallels in England, where major advances have been made in the understanding of minor toponyms during the last half century. As Field (1989, 31) comments, “the repertoire of names is remarkably similar across national frontiers;” this means that comparative evidence from south of the present Scottish/ English border is likely to be relevant to interpreting some Scottish names. Here I reexamine a number of problematic field names from the Scottish counties of Midlothian and West Lothian in the light of recent work on English place names.