Richard Coates


Richard Coates is an English linguist. He was professor of linguistics at the University of the West of England, Bristol, now emeritus. From 1977 to 2006 he taught at the University of Sussex, where he served as professor of linguistics and as Dean of the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences. From 1980–9 he was assistant secretary and then secretary of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. He was honorary director of the Survey of English Place-Names from 2003 to 2019, having previously served as president of the English Place-Name Society which conducts the Survey, resuming this role in 2019. From 2002 to 2008, he was secretary of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, a body devoted to the promotion of the study of names, and elected as one of its two vice-presidents from 2011–17. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1992 and of the Royal Society of Arts in 2001.
His main academic interests are proper names, historical linguistics in general, the philology of the Germanic, Romance and Celtic languages, regional variation in language, and local history. He is editor of the Survey of English Place-Names for Hampshire and was principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project Family Names of the United Kingdom, running from 2010–16, of which Patrick Hanks was lead researcher.
He has written books on the names of the Channel Islands, the local place-names of St Kilda, Hampshire and Sussex, the dialect of Sussex, and, with Andrew Breeze, on Celtic place-names in England, as well as over 500 academic articles, notes, and collections on related topics. His main contribution to linguistic theory is The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood, set out in a number of articles since 2000.
He is also the author of Word Structure, a students' introduction to linguistic morphology, and of online resources on Shakespeare's character-names and on the place-names of Hayling Island.

Books, dissertations and selected other freestanding publications

1977 The status of rules in historical phonology. Doctoral dissertation 10301, University of Cambridge.
1987 New horizons in linguistics 2. Harmondsworth: Pelican; pp. viii + 465.
1988 Toponymic topics: essays on the early toponymy of the British Isles. Brighton: Younsmere Press; pp. v + 124.
1989 The place-names of Hampshire. London: Batsford; pp. vii + 193.
1990 The place-names of St Kilda: nomina hirtensia. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen ; pp. viii + 221.
1991 The ancient and modern names of the Channel Islands: a linguistic history. Stamford: Paul Watkins; pp. xiv + 144.
1992 De A.B.C. psalms by Jim Cladpole. Brighton: Younsmere Press; pp. 46.
1993 Hampshire place-names. Southampton: Ensign Publications. Paperback edition of The place-names of Hampshire; pp. 193.
1996–2007 Locus focus: forum of the Sussex place-names net.
1999 The place-names of West Thorney. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society ; pp. v + 64.
1999 Word structure. London and New York: Routledge ; pp. ix + 101.
2000 Celtic voices, English places: studies of the Celtic impact on place-names in England. Stamford: Shaun Tyas; pp. xiv + 433.
2006 Name theory. Special issue of Onoma, vol. 41 ; pp. 309.
2007 The place-names of Hayling Island, Hampshire.
2010 A place-name history of the parishes of Rottingdean and Ovingdean in Sussex. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society ; pp. xviii + 222,.
2010 The traditional dialect of Sussex: a history, description, selected texts, bibliography and discography. Lewes: Pomegranate Press; pp. 349.
2016 The Oxford dictionary of family names in the United Kingdom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2017 Wilkins of Westbury and Redland: the life and writings of the Rev. Dr Henry John Wilkins. Bristol: Avon Local History Association pamphlet 24.
2017 Your city's place-names: Brighton and Hove. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society.
2017 Your city's place-names: Bristol. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society.
2018 Onomastica Uralica 11.
2019 Places, names and history in north-west Bristol: Shirehampton, Avonmouth and King’s Weston. Bristol: Bristol Centre for Linguistics, University of the West of England.
2019 Your city's place-names: Cambridge. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society.
2020 Naming, identity and tourism. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
2020 Explorations in literary onomastic theory. Special issue of Onoma, vol. 53.