Popular Books on English Place-Names — a Serious Issue in Onomastics

This article reflects on a recent spate of books on English place-names produced by a nonprofessional writer, showing in considerable detail, for five counties, in what ways these books are deficient, and do not perform what ought to be the praiseworthy service of bringing the fruits of 90 years of academic research to an interested general audience. It also attempts an understanding of the reasons for this phenomenon. It is noted that toponymists these days are more adept at bringing their work to that wider audience, but their efforts are likely to be subverted by the flood of inadequate books already in the market-place. The relatively small number of credible, scientifically valid popular books produced by professional toponymists, on the one hand, and the opacity of their special publications aimed at historians and philologists, on the other, compel the non-professional audience to use low quality books that often provide unreliable information and contain numerous inaccuracies making those books useless, if not harmful. Until this gap is filled, the situation can hardly change for the better. The author suggests that new publicly funded toponymic projects ought, as a matter of course, to have a requirement built into them that the fruits of the work and new findings should be made accessible to a wide audience.