Delighted my book has proved inspiring to you, and hope your continued explorations into local place-names lasts a lifetime. Great blog post! And brill you bought the EPNS for you county. Those volumes aren’t cheap or easy to come by, but can’t be beaten.

Ah @helenthev.bsky.social, so glad you’re reading it! Thank you, and happy Christmas.

Hmm, never come across that interpretation, not in the original Old English anyway. It means the birds, or sometimes possibly a personal name, Finca.

Oh that’s awesome. I mention now there aren’t any old curlew PNs in Old English. I’d love it if there was evidence for early origin for names like this.

Would love to know some of the field names.

A great book, but as you’ll see, not many bird place-names in it, compared to the equivalent in English anyway.

that there are for English PNs. A key point in my book was discovering the ancient origins, of course.

Thanks Julian. I do make a trip to Wales, as you’ll know, as I do to Scotland, just to show that bird PNs exist in these countries too! I hope someone does cover Wales’ bird PNs one day. The difficulty, as for Scotland again, and Ireland, is that there just aren’t the records for early provenance