[This page shows what Philip Dance was working on, and what he had in mind as possible future areas of development, at the time of his death in Ocober 2008.]
In the pipeline
I am always trying to develop this site, constantly reading around the subject in order to absorb ideas and information.
At present, I am studying the following areas:
- Naming Systems of the World – a bibliography
– this has taken most of my research time in 2007 and early 2008 -to the detriment of developing the rest of the site. It became an obsession. - Phonology, name-matching and surnames
On the back-burner (semi-frozen)
- a potted history of the GRO for the site
- Multivariate Statistics/ Spatial analysis and surnames
- Personal names as a subset of the class of proper names (Philosophy, Syntax and Semantics)
- Given names and statistics/historical patterns
- History of parish boundaries
- Surnames and the hearth-tax: a geographical perspective
- Surnames and migration
More than enough to be going on with.