Names database
(version 1b)

The Names database originated in the indexes to the individual county volumes of the edition of Domesday Book published by Phillimore and Co. in 39 volumes between 1975 and 1986. These county indexes were subsequently revised and amalgamated into a national index by J. McN. Dodgson and myself and published by Phillimore in 1992 as Domesday Book Index Part Two: Persons. The introduction to that volume explains the principles upon which it was compiled. Further revisions were incorporated into the first published electronic Domesday, Domesday Explorer, created by myself, Matthew Palmer and George Slater and published by Phillimore in 2000. For the present project, the personal name stock has been substantially revised by Mrs Caroline Thorn (see further Name Policy 1a.rtf).
	Many individuals named only by their Christian names have been identified in this database, with varying degrees of confidence. The basis of these identifications are explained in the IDs.rtf file. They are signalled in the database by the use of brackets: round brackets for a byname attested by contemporary sources, chevrons for a name derived from an estate held by the individual for whom no byname is recorded, and curly brackets for bynames recorded in the Domesday satellite texts. The process of identifying individuals is on-going though this revised edition adds substantially to the previous data-set.

The Names database consists of a single table, linked to the DomesdayStatistics database and to the DomesdayTextbase.

The Names table contains eight fields and 13956 records:
NamesIdx	unique record number, for linkage and sorting.
Name	personal name
County	standard 3-letter abbreviation for the Domesday county
Phillimore	Phillimore entry reference
NameCode	code (L) for unidentified personal name-element, recorded in its Latin form
GenderCode	male or female (M/F)
ChurchCode	code for institutional type (see below)
Xrefs	cross reference to related names or name-forms

ChurchCode coding
a	English abbeys
b	English archbishops and bishops
c	English canons
d	Other English clergy and institutions
e	Foreign bishops
f	Foreign monasteries
g	Foreign nunneries
h	minster & other landowning churches
n	English nunneries

J.J.N. Palmer,
July 2010.