Duncan Probert

Duncan Probert (born 13 April 1961, died on 15 December 2016) was a scholar of early medieval British place- and personal names, one of the editors of the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland,[1] and a council member of the English Place-Name Society from 2005 to his death. He was particularly noted for his work in his doctoral thesis and subsequent publications revising scholars' 'understanding of the relationship between the West Saxons and the Britons of the south west' in early medieval Britain.[2] This included major contributions to understanding Kingston place-names in England,[3] and 'searching'[4] and 'painstaking'[5] research showing 'how close scrutiny of charters and their bounds can allow detailed understanding of earlier land units and landscapes'.[6]

Life
Example of miniature figure painted by Duncan Probert with English penny for scale .

Prior to beginning his career as a historian, Probert worked as 'a bio-mathematician at Grasslands Research, then after a succession of other jobs (at various times he made intricate miniature model figures, drove a skip lorry, was a school caretaker, a computer programmer, and even did some building work) he started his own graphic-design business in Stoke on Trent'. He returned to education in the 1990s, completing an Open University Arts Foundation course in 1994, taking a First in his BA in Medieval Studies at University of Birmingham in 1998, and proceeding directly to a PhD at the same institution, which he completed in 2002. During 2003-6 he was a British Academy fellow at Birmingham, and a visiting lecturer in Medieval History 2006-15, as well as a Research Associate on the ‘Family Names of the UK’ project at the University of the West of England 2012-14 and, from 2010 to his death, a research fellow at King's College, London. He also undertook historical re-enactment, mostly of the Viking Age.[7] He 'managed to combine the hard-headedness of real-world employment experience with an irrepressible belief in the power of human ingenuity to solve problems'.[8]

Works

As of May 2016, it was 'hoped that his partner, Alison, and his friend and former supervisor, Steve Bassett, will be able to bring some of his unfinished pieces to publication in the future. Unfinished work includes a draft dictionary of Devon place-names.'[7]

PhD Thesis

Book
  • [co-editor with several others], The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ed. P. Hanks et al. (Oxford: OUP, 2016).

Articles

Database

Cartography

Probert was also noted for his cartographic work for a range of academic books, producing maps 'ranging in date from ancient Nubia to the Boer War'.[7] Examples include:

  • Simon Yarrow, Saints and their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006)
  • Steven Bassett, 'Anglo-Saxon Warwick', Midland History, 34.2 (2009), 123-55, https://dx.doi.org/10.1179/175638109X417332
  • C. P. Lewis, 'Danish Landowners in Wessex in 1066', in Danes in Wessex: The Scandinavian Impact on Southern England, c. 800-c. 1100, ed. by Ryan Lavelle and Simon Roffey (Oxford: Oxbow, 2016), pp. 172–211

References
  1. The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ed. by Patrick Hanks and others, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
  2. Thomas Pickles, review of Aldhelm and Sherborne. Essays to Celebrate the Founding of the Bishopric. ed. by Katherine Barker and Nicholas Brooks (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010) in The Antiquaries Journal, 92 (2012), 476-77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003581512000959.
  3. C.P. Lewis, 'III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200): (i) British History', Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 94 (2011), 13-37.
  4. Stefan Jurasinski, review of Place-Names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape, ed. by N. J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 10 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011, in Speculum, 89 (2014), 486-88 (pp. 487-88); DOI: 10.1017/S0038713414000372.
  5. Richard Jones, review of Place-Names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape, ed. by N. J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 10 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011, in Landscapes, 12.2 (2011), 109-11. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1179/lan.2011.12.2.101.
  6. John Baker, review of Place-Names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape, Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 10 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), in The Medieval Review (2011), no. 11.11.01, http://josotl.indiana.edu/index.php/tmr/article/view/17393/23511.
  7. Shaun Tyas, 'Duncan Probert: 1961 - 2016' (9 May 2017). [Also published as Shaun Tyas, 'Obituary: Duncan Probert', Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 48 (2016), 104–108.
  8. Jonathan Jarrett, 'Duncan Probert', A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe (16 December 2016).
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