Richard Coates

Who is Richard Coates?

Richard Coates is an English linguist. He is professor of linguistics at the University of the West of England, Bristol. 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 has been honorary director of the Survey of English Place-Names since 2003, having previously served as president of the English Place-Name Society which conducts the Survey. 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 2011-14. 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 principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project Family Names of the United Kingdom, running from 2010–14, of which Patrick Hanks is lead researcher.