The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Britain and Ireland published to great acclaim in November 2016. It was the result of a 4-year funded research project into family names of the British Isles based on previous research but using new principles, methods, and resources, and provided explanations of and evidence for the origins, history, and geographical distribution tens of thousands of family names that are found in Britain and Ireland, many of them never explained before.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Britain includes almost all of the 45,600 names from the original text, plus some original rare names, in a more concise format. Each entry includes:

- variant names
- 1881 British frequencies for each name
- main GB locations
- etymological explanations, including multiple senses, language/culture, and name type

This Dictionary makes the unique family names content of the original 4-volume set available to individuals and libraries for whom it is otherwise out of reach. It will be of especial interest to researchers into family history.

Harry Parkin, Lecturer in English Language, University of Chester

Harry Parkin is a lecturer in English Language at the University of Chester. He has also worked at the Universities of Westminster and the West of England. His main research interests are the history of the English language, in particular Middle English vocabulary and dialectology, and the use of onomastic data for the analysis of regional dialect lexis and phonology.