Surname and Place Name Index

to

The Investigation of Place-Names

by

Arthur B. Prowse, Lt.-Col. R.A.M.C., M.D., F.R.C.S.

Trans. Devon Assoc., vol. 52, (1920), pp. 282-288.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The paper was read at the Association’s July 21st, 1920 Totnes meeting. It has since been regarded as one of the Association’s particularly important philological foundation documents. In it, the author asserted that he had for several years compiled an index to the place-names of Devon, “feeling assured that as complete a list as possible is a necessary preliminary to fruitful investigation into the derivation and meaning of the names”. At the time of the Totnes conference his collection contained several thousand names and their variants; and was continually being augmented. In 1931, the English Place Name Society produced a two volume set on Devon’s place names and a new Devon Place-Name Project was in 2017 jointly initiated by the DA History Section and the Devon History Society. The paper may be found in a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal that can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.