Place-names

by Dr Ken George

Many people become interested in Cornish in the first instance by looking at the place-names.

When Cornwall Council was formed in 2009, it adopted a policy of gradually providing bilingual name-plates for all the streets. In 2012, I was asked to become a member of the Signage Panel, a group originally charged with deciding the best form of Cornish on these name-plates, but which has widened its interest to cover all place-names within Cornwall and Scilly, and many exonyms. To assist the panel, I have produced discussion papers on

I have also been asked, several times, to talk about the place-names of Cornwall, the last occasion being at Pillaton.

The two-dimensional distribution of place-names in Cornwall may be reduced to one by using the distance from Land's End. When this distance is plotted against time, a useful diagram is produced.