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| Oxford Dictionary of Family Names | |
|---|---|
| Name | Oxford Dictionary of Family Names |
| Editor | Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, Peter McClure |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Onomastics, Anthroponymy |
| Release date | 2016 |
| Media type | Print, electronic |
| Pages | 4,000+ (approx.) |
Oxford Dictionary of Family Names is a comprehensive reference work documenting family names principally in the British Isles with comparative materials from Europe and beyond. It provides etymologies, historical attestations, geographical distributions and variant forms for tens of thousands of surnames, compiled by specialists in onomastics, lexicography and historical linguistics. The project intersects scholarship associated with institutions and figures across lexicography, genealogy and historical studies.
The dictionary was conceived as a large-scale scholarly synthesis bringing together expertise from projects at Oxford University Press, the University of the West of England, the University of Sussex, and partners linked to the Institute of Historical Research, the British Academy and national archives such as The National Archives (United Kingdom). Contributors drew on manuscript collections at the Bodleian Library, parish registers held by The National Archives (United Kingdom), and printed sources including outputs from the Surrey History Centre, the Cambridge University Press corpus projects and county record offices in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Kent and Cornwall. Editorial leadership coordinated methodologies familiar from major reference enterprises like the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of National Biography.
Work on the dictionary followed earlier surname studies such as those by Patrick Hanks and regional surveys produced under the auspices of the Local History Division of many county councils and learned societies like the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London. Initial funding and institutional support were secured from bodies including the Arts and Humanities Research Council and endowments connected with the Wellcome Trust. The first comprehensive printed edition was issued by Oxford University Press in 2016, with an accompanying online platform that parallels other digital resources maintained by OUP, similar in ambition to the digitization efforts of the Cambridge Dictionary and projects linked to the British Library.
The dictionary adopts comparative philological techniques used by scholars associated with the Philological Society, methods from the fieldwork traditions of researchers at the School of Oriental and African Studies and corpus-based approaches akin to those of Hans Kurath and teams at the Linguistic Data Consortium. It integrates data from censuses conducted by the Office for National Statistics, hearth tax returns preserved at the National Records of Scotland, and passenger lists archived by National Archives and Records Administration. Etymological proposals engage with onomastic traditions exemplified by studies of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle names, medieval charters from collections like the Calendar of Patent Rolls, and Gaelic material from repositories associated with the Irish Manuscripts Commission and the National Library of Ireland.
Entries typically include headword forms, variant spellings, earliest known occurrences drawn from sources such as the Domesday Book, the Pipe Rolls, and manorial court rolls, plus explanations that reference lexical correspondences in languages and dialects documented by authorities like A. J. B. Hope, Eilert Ekwall, George Redmonds and Reaney and Wilson. The work provides maps of modern surname distribution derived from datasets comparable to those produced by the General Register Office and interactive features in its electronic incarnation that mirror interfaces used by the Oxford English Dictionary online. Cross-references link to biographical subjects catalogued in the Dictionary of National Biography, to migration studies represented by scholarship on the Great Migration (Puritan) and to genealogical resources such as those developed by Findmypast and Ancestry.com.
Scholars in onomastics, history and genealogy have evaluated the dictionary alongside canonical references like the Oxford English Dictionary and regional surname surveys by figures such as Henry Harrison and W. A. D. Lambton. Reviews appeared in venues associated with the Journal of Historical Linguistics, the English Historical Review and the Surname Society Journal, situating the work within debates on methodological rigor championed by the British Academy and comparative European projects funded by the European Research Council. Family historians and academic researchers have used it to re-evaluate lineages connected to notable figures in British history—from entries implicated in studies of families linked to the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian era social networks, and politicians represented in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom—while librarians and archivists at institutions like the Bodleian Library and the British Library have integrated its data into cataloguing workflows.
The primary edition was published by Oxford University Press with subsequent electronic updates and dataset releases mirroring practices in other major reference series such as the Oxford English Dictionary and the Cambridge History volumes. Related scholarship and regional complements include monographs and county surname guides by authors affiliated with the Institute for Name-Studies at University of Nottingham, surveys from the Surname Society, and specialized works on Irish, Scottish and Welsh surnames tied to the National Library of Scotland and the Dictionary of Welsh Biography. The dictionary sits alongside enduring resources such as the work of Eilert Ekwall, the compilations by Reaney and Wilson, and modern databases curated by commercial and academic genealogy services.
Category:Onomastics Category:Reference works