Grave of swedish professor Eilert Ekwall lund sweden

Bror Oscar Eilert Ekwall (8 January 1877 in Vallsjö – 23 November 1964 in

Lund Lund (, ;"Lund"
(US) and ) is a city in the provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, southern Swed ...

) was a Swedish academic, Professor of English at Sweden's

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

from 1909 to 1942 and one of the outstanding scholars of the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

in the first half of the 20th century. He wrote works on the history of English, but he is best known as the author of numerous important books on English place-names (in the broadest sense) and

personal names A personal name, full name or prosoponym (from Ancient Greek ''prósōpon'' – person, and ''onoma'' –name) is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a word-group, they all relate to that on ...

Scholarly works

His chief works in this area are ''The Place-Names of Lancashire'' (1922), ''English Place-Names in -ing'' (1923, new edition 1961), ''English River Names'' (1928), ''Studies on English Place- and Personal Names'' (1931), ''Studies on English Place-Names'' (1936), ''Street-Names of the City of London'' (1954), ''Studies on the Population of Medieval London'' (1956), and the monumental ''Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names'' (1936, new editions 1940, 1947/51 and the last in 1960). The ''Dictionary'' remained the standard national reference resource for over 40 years, and is still valuable even though some aspects of Ekwall's methodology and some of his ideas are no longer accepted.Unlike other "Concise Oxford dictionaries" it is not an abridgement, just scaled down to what Ekwall himself could bring to completion. He based it on the names in Bartholomew's ''Gazetteer of the British Isles'', then excluded Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Ireland and the Channel Islands. Also excluded were names of late origin, or names without any record of early forms. "It is the first principle of place-name etymology that there must be early name forms on which to found the explanation." (There was a supplement of Monmouthshire place-names as it was officially once a county of England, but only since the year 1535; it was confirmed as being part of Wales in the

Local Government Act 1972 The Local Government Act 1972 (c. 70) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Gov ...

.)—''Concise Dictionary'' (1940); pp. vii, 521-524 Although not a county editor of the survey conducted by the English Place-Name Society (1923-date), his philological advice was often sought and acknowledged by scholars preparing the county volumes, such as

Allen Mawer Sir Allen Mawer, (8 May 1879 − 22 July 1942) was an English philologist. A notable researcher of Viking activity in the British Isles, Mawer is best known as the founder of the English Place-Name Society, and as Provost of University Col ...

and

Frank Stenton Sir Frank Merry Stenton FBA (17 May 1880 – 15 September 1967) was an English historian of Anglo-Saxon England, a professor of history at the University of Reading (1926–1946), president of the Royal Historical Society (1937–1945), Readi ...

. He was competent not only in English philology, but also in Scandinavian and

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

, making him ideally qualified as an authority on linguistic aspects of the place-names of England. His other work on English included scholarly editions of classic early-modern works such as John Jones' ''Practical Phonography'' of 1701 (1907), the anonymous ''Writing Scholar's Companion'' of 1695 (1911), and

John Lydgate John Lydgate of Bury () was an English monk and poet, born in Lidgate, near Haverhill, Suffolk, Haverhill, Suffolk, England. Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. He explored and estab ...

's ''Siege of Thebes'' (1930). Notable other books or booklets were that on modern English phonology and morphology originally published in German in 1914, and still being reprinted in 1965 (English edition finally after Ekwall's death, in 1975); and that on the genitive of groups, with much relevance for place-name studies (1943). Ekwall also left behind an extensive body of influential academic articles and notes (many collected in the books of 1931 and 1936 mentioned above), local working papers of Lund University, and a very large number of book reviews, all published over a period of some 60 years, in English, Swedish and German, and mostly referenced in von Feilitzen's bibliography. From 1935, Ekwall was a Fellow of the Swedish Academy of Letters and the Swedish Academy of Sciences. He and his wife Dagny founded a bursary for students at Lund University from the

Småland Småland () is a historical Provinces of Sweden, province () in southern Sweden. Småland borders Blekinge, Scania, Halland, Västergötland, Östergötland and the island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The name ''Småland'' literally means "small la ...

region.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ekwall, Eilert 1877 births 1964 deaths Toponymists Academic staff of Lund University Germanic languages Corresponding fellows of the British Academy Members of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy People from Sävsjö Municipality

Scholarly works

Further reading (not mentioned above)

Footnotes