Duncan Probert


Duncan Probert 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, 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. This included major contributions to understanding Kingston place-names in England, and 'searching' and 'painstaking' research showing 'how close scrutiny of charters and their bounds can allow detailed understanding of earlier land units and landscapes'.

Life

Prior to beginning his career as a historian, Probert worked as 'a bio-mathematician at Grasslands Research, then after a succession of other jobs 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. 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'.
Probert was the honorand of a memorial volume of academic essays published in 2022.

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.'

PhD Thesis

  • ‘’, Birmingham University, Ph.D. thesis.

    Book

  • , The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, ed. P. Hanks et al..

    Articles

  • ‘’, Agricultural Systems 10, 213–44.
  • ‘’, Britons in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. N. J. Higham, 233–44.
  • ‘, JEPNS 40, 7–22.
  • ‘’, The Church in English Place-Names, ed. E. Quinton, 15–22.
  • ‘’, Aldhelm and Sherborne: Essays to Celebrate the Foundation of the Bishopric, ed. K. Barker, 110–28.
  • , ‘’, JEPNS 42, 79–85
  • ‘’, Place-Names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape, ed. N. J. Higham and M. J. Ryan, 175–94.
  • ‘’, Nomina 35, 1–19.
  • ‘’, Notes & Queries 60, 26–8.
  • ‘’, Nomina 37, 35–71.
  • ‘’, Notes Queries 62, 517–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjv156
  • ‘What has Ingold to Do with Domesday? An Exercise in Identification in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 60, 1–30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1484/J.NMS.5.111277.

    Database

  • , , 2nd edition.

    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'. Examples include:
  • Simon Yarrow, Saints and their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth Century England
  • Steven Bassett, 'Anglo-Saxon Warwick', Midland History, 34.2, 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, pp. 172–211