Margaret Gelling

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Dr Margaret Gelling is an English toponymist. She is a Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and OBE (1995, placenames). She was formerly the President of the English Place-Name 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 1-900289-26-1), 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.