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'Albert Hugh Smith' OBE (24 February 1903-11 May 1967) was a scholar of Old English and Scandinavian languages and played a major part in the study and publication of English place names.
Smith was the son of A J and Anne Smith of Sowerby, West Yorkshire. He was educated at Rushworth School Yorkshire and after a time working as a railway booking clerk he went to Leeds University where he was awarded PhD in 1926. His PhD thesis was about place names of the North Riding and the study of place names remained of continuing interest to him, resulting in several publications. He was Vaughan Fellow at Leeds University from 1924 to 1926, and was then lecturer in English at Saltley College Birmingham from 1926 to 1928. From 1928 to 1930 he was English lecturer at Uppsala University and then came back to University College London as a lecturer and reader. In 1937 he was awarded DLIT at London University. During the war, he devised new methods of photographing damaged manuscripts for the Royal Air Force. In 1947 he was awarded the OBE, and in 1949 succeeded W. P Ker and Raymond Wilson Chambers as Quain professor of English at University College. One of his successors was his former student Randolph Quirk. He was director of Scandinavian studies in U.C.L from 1946 to 1963. He took over the English Place Names Survey in 1951 on which work had virtually ceased during the war.
He produced a large number of publications and was also joint editor of Methuen’s series of Old English Library and of the Early English Texts Society's Facsimile of The Parker Chronicle and Laws 1941.
He married in 1928 Helen Penelope Tomlinson the daughter of Charles Herbert Tomlinson, a coal merchamt of Solihull and his wife Lucy. They had two children.

Contents

Works

References

Works

★ The place names of the North Riding’, (1928) which was an expansion of his PhD thesis

★ The Place-Names of the E. Riding and York (1937).

★ English Place-Names Elements (1956).

★ The Place-Names of the West Riding, 1961-63 8 volumes

★ The Place-Names of Gloucestershire, 1964-65, 4 volumes

★ The Place-Names of Westmorland

References

★ Who’s Who

★ Times Obituaries May 1967