Margaret Gelling

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Dr Margaret Gelling (born 1924) is an English toponymist. She is a Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford and a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and the British Academy. She also holds an OBE (1995, place names). 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 which include the English Place-Name Society surveys of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Shropshire, and a lecturer likewise on place names 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 books are Signposts to the Past, 3rd edn (Chichester: Phillimore, 2000), first published in 1978 and, with Ann Cole, The Landscape of Place-names (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000, repr. 2003; ISBN 1-900289-26-1), based on her earlier Place-names in the Landscape (London: Dent, 1984). The Landscape of Place-Names is a reference to settlement names of the type which define a settlement by reference to a landscape feature, as found in Britain south of the Forth–Clyde line.

Gelling established the relationship between Anglo-Saxon names and the landscape; for example the Anglo-Saxons had about forty 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.