Margaret Gelling
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Dr Margaret Gelling is an English toponomist. She is a Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and OBE (1995, placenames). She is the President of the English Placename 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 placenames 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 1900289261), 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 40 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. A particular placename of modern evolution is Spaghetti Junction, also of navigational significance, being a major and complex motorway intersection in the city in which she lives.
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