Scottish Placenames David Ross by David Ross 9781841581736, 1841581739 instant download after payment.

Names are very important to us. There is something specially satisfying about entering a place and knowing what its name actually means. And, for those who can interpret them, the place-names of Scotland are a rich source of information on times long past. They give intriguing insights into the minds and habits of early inhabitants. The different languages of their origin – Gaelic, Pictish, Cumbric, Old Norse, Old English – still preserve the memory of what Robert Louis Stevenson called ‘the vanished races’, who gave names to the wild and beautiful landscape in which they lived. Some names may go back even earlier, to prehistoric inhabitants whose languages died out more than two thousand years ago.

This book gives a fairly comprehensive survey of major Scottish place-names, their histories (in brief), and their meanings.  Includes many habitations, as well as lochs, mountains, rivers, and various other features.

It is set out in a convenient A–Z reference format, and has an informative Introduction, as well as an index of minor places mentioned in other entries but which do not have entries of their own.

The author, David Ross, is a historian and professional writer, whose books include Scotland: History of a Nation, and Scottish Quotations.

Note: This book is a longer and more detailed version of the same author's Dictionary of Scottish Place-names. While it is not the most comprehensive work of this sort, it has some information not found in others, and is much newer than most, so for some instances it may reflect updated linguistic information.  OCRed pretty accurately, for searching and for copy-pasting information.