Talk:Domesday Book

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I think we may want a disambiguation from "Doomsday book" rather than a simple redirect -- I can think of at least two books with that title, one a ca. 1970s popular science eco-doom polemic (by Gordon Rattray Taylor, I think), and a ca. 1991 award-winning science fiction novel (by Connie Willis?) Malcolm Farmer

the idiot who made it the 'Domesday Book' has been dead many centuries.--hamstar 16:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

this page requires sectioning and integration of its text. Badanedwa 04:56, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] "The"

Is it "the" Doomsday Book, or just Doomsday Book. Magna Carta has the same issue, the use of "the" is not used (see Discussion). I have seen it in history books without the "the". For example:

By the time of Doomsday Book the county network was almost complete..

Comments or ideas? Stbalbach 06:21, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, I've always heard it called The Doomsday Book, and the references without "the" seem very strange to me. TheMadBaron 01:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Agree. Anyone want to be bold and add some thes? 218.102.71.167 02:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't advise it. It is always written without the definite article. It may look odd, but it's the case. If you've "always heard it called The Doomsday Book" then you've always heard it wrong. And spelt it wrong, incidentally. -- Necrothesp 12:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
Anyone concerned about the lack of "thes" should have a look at the National Archives site, referenced in the article. Not a "the" in sight. Bluewave 15:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree that the standard usage by those 'in the know' is without the definite article, so it's right that that's how it should be written here. However, almost everywhere else in Wikipedia except in this entry it's written with a 'the'. It's way beyond my capability, but is it possible for some kind of auto-correction bot to be created that would remove all the uses of 'the' that appear in front of 'Domesday Book' elsewhere? Russ London 09:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Domesday scholarship largely started in the 19th century with Maitland and Vinogradoff. F W Maitland (1897) Domesday Book and Beyond remains one of the seminal works. These guys started using Domesday Book with the 'The' but I can find no reference to why in their work. Now it's a matter of Domesday 'snobbery' that you don't use 'The' because that shows you up as a non-Domesdayer. I think the absence of the definite article for medieval texts goes back to the original medieval references where the article is normally unused, reason for this being the original references and documents are in Latin and in Latin there is no article. Every work on the subject I've seen omits 'The'. (Patrick Molineux, 14/02/2007) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pmoline3 (talk • contribs) 10:01, 14 January 2007 (UTC).
Readers should sense that "snobbery" might be beside the point. By a similar attitude someone else who knew nothing might be babbling about "The" Magna Carta, by missing Pmoline3's single operative sentence, "Every work on the subject I've seen omits 'The'." Resisting any particular conventional usage, though, will predictably mark one out as an Original among one's peers. --Wetman 10:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps the answer on this is to note in the article that historiographical convention is not to use the article. For those readers interested in the absence of the article this at least alerts them to that convention. However, I don't know how to provide a reference to that convention other than a list of all major academic works on Domesday using the convention! Pmoline3 11:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Etymology

Bill Bryson in The Mother Tongue claims that domesday was taken from the same root as domestic and is unrelated to the modern meaning of doomsday. I haven't checked this independent of his book, so haven't corrected the first paragraph. -- rra@stanford.edu, 2004-07-20

Bill Bryson was wrong about many, many etymological examples he gave in _The Mother Tongue_. I would not take anything he says at face value. 172.162.242.76 03:55, 13 May 2007 (UTC)An Anthropology Major

Well, according to YOU he was wrong. But you don't have any more credibility than he does. So why should anyone believe you more than him? How many books have you had published? I'm sorry....? Oh...the silence is deafening. Now, can I get you anything? A life, perhaps?

I thought the word "domesday" came from the same root as "domestic", i.e. related to peoples homes, and doesn't actually have any connection with "doom" in the sense of "final judgements".


It looks like the article is correct on this, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary: "The name appears to have been derived directly from Domesday the Day of the Last Judgement, and Domesday Book the Book by which all men would be judged. It originated as a popular appellation..."

Crust 19:33, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I have serious doubts about this. Old English dom did not refer to the Last judgement in particular, but it meant simply "judgement". Thus, a domesday would simply be the day on which human judges were in session, unrelated to ideas of eschatology. 130.60.142.65 11:07, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
That might be a literal view, but how would "domesday" have been understood idiomatically? The book is named by allusion to the day of Final Judgement --Dannyno 13:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
And, according to the OED, "Domestic" comes from the Latin root "domus", meaning house. "Doom", which is the true root of "Domesday", is an Old English word of Germanic origin meaning "statute, judgement". Since The Domesday book isn't just about houses, this makes sense. Remember that "Domesday Book" is actually a 12th century name for William the Conqueror's survey, not what it was originally called. The word domestic is first attested by the OED in 1521. So it doesn't work eymologically either. --Dannyno 13:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

This is an interesting conversation that would be perfect at Wiktionary, they need etymological and dicdef help. Stbalbach 18:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] wikisource template

I removed the wikisource notice because it distracts from the article. --Stbalbach 05:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Prince-Bishop Link??

Out of curiosity, why does the word "prince-bishop" in the section "Domesday Book" link to Bishop of Durham rather than to prince-bishop? --Kuaichik 00:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest it links there because the subject of the link is a Bishop of Durham (the Bishops of Durham were Prince Bishops).DuncanHill 17:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronounciation

Could someone please add the pronounciation as an ogg vorbis file... I think its necessary to get that clear for people reading the article. 83.67.79.40 14:46, 14 October 2006 (UTC)Hira

[edit] Settlements mentioned in Domesday in Wikipedia

Browsing around Wikipedia's English settlement articles, it seems that a few mention references in Domesday but many don't. Has anyone thought of creating some sort of standard Domesday infobox entry and adding lots more? I believe there are online databases of Domesday entries, could they be linked somehow? Grateful for info on this from people more knowledgeable - obviously I suppose we could start going through adding loads, but maybe there's a better way to do it? CreativeLogic 17:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Would a category "Settlements mentioned in Domesday" be helpful? Bluewave 17:21, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Sounds great. Nice name too. Is there a way to simplify creating such a category, for example, can you do it en-masse somehow? CreativeLogic 18:50, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] a surveyors' perspective

as the domesday book is a survey of land, i think it would be beneficial to view it as well as relate to it as such, that is in terms of the cadastre,and land administration/management161.76.194.32 01:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)tolu ayelabola 20/03/2007

[edit] Protection?

Has anybody considered protecting this page? Looks like it's constantly subject to vandalism. --Kuaichik 06:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] William's motivation for ordering it?

"William needed information about the country he had just conquered so he could administer it."

I may have my history wrong, but didn't he conquer England in 1066? Why would he need a census 20 years later in order to "administer" it? My bet is it was tied somehow to increasing taxes. And it seems "just conquered" ignores that 20-year gap also, but I don't want to change it because I don't know why he really ordered it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.107.139.9 (talk) 01:19, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


Why does everyone assume that William ordered the survey because he needed information to administer England? What about the possibility that he ordered it in order to confirm the land grabs made by Norman nobles in the aftermath of the conquest? Or the threat of Danish invasion in 1085? Also there is no mention in the entry about the extremely likely possibility that Domesday was in fact based on the pre-existing Anglo Saxon Geld Rolls —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.22.74.174 (talk) 21:28, 10 February 2008 (UTC)