MARGARET GELLING

Dr 'Margaret Gelling' (born 1924) is an English toponymist. She is a Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and OBE (1995, place names). She was formerly the President of the English Place-Name Society. She is the author, co-author or editor of numerous books, several which have become standard works in the field of toponymy, and a lecturer likewise on place names at the universities of Birmingham (Edgbaston), annually at Oxford, and in the past periodically at various international meetings.
She was a sometime member of an expedition to Peru devoted to investigating the history of potato use including freeze-drying at altitude. Consequently, she became experienced at cooking over a fire of dried llama dung in a cave.
Her most publicly visible and accessible book is, with Ann Cole, ''The Landscape of Placenames'' (ISBN 1-900289-26-1), a reference to the type of settlement name which defines the settlement by reference to a landscape feature, as found in Britain south of the Forth–Clyde line.
She established the relationship between Anglo-Saxon names and the landscape; for example the Anglo-Saxons had about forty words that can describe hills, but these are mostly regarded as synonyms in modern English. In those times, the distinction between a knoll and a creech could be a very important navigational direction.

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★ Interview with her in ''British Archaeology''