Published: Wednesday, 20th January, 2010 3:51pm

Historian to give Abbot House lecture

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HISTORIAN Simon Taylor will be giving a lecture on the 'Place Names of Fife' in Dunfermline's Abbot House on Tuesday afternoon.

Well known for his work on Scottish place names, he is a research fellow at Glasgow' University's Department of Celtic Studies.

Simon's interest in the subject began in the late 1980s and his ambition was to produce a series of volumes on the place names of his home county of Fife.

He believes that place-names are windows on an otherwise unrecorded or poorly recorded past and it is this aspect that he wants to explore.

Place names can tell us the history of Fife over the past 1000 and more years, as regards languages, society, settlement, agriculture, the administration of justice, the church and the cult of saints.

Fife is not only a discrete geographical area, it is one which has been subject to many different linguistic influences, all of which are reflected in its place names: Pictish, Gaelic, Scots, Scottish standard English and some Scandinavian and French.

Simon has produced three volumes on this subject and will draw on these for his talk in Abbot House, which starts at 2pm.

Tickets are priced £3.50 and are on sale at Abbot House on 733266.