Oliver James Padel is an authority on the origin and meaning of place-names

Toponymy

Toponymy is the scientific study of place names , their origins, meanings, use and typology. The word "toponymy" is derived from the Greek words tópos and ónoma . Toponymy is itself a branch of onomastics, the study of names of all kinds...

, currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

  and Visiting Professor of Celtic at the University of the West of England

University of the West of England

The University of the West of England is a university based in the English city of Bristol. Its main campus is at Frenchay, about five miles north of the city centre...

.

He was born in 1948. He is the son of John Hunter Padel and his wife Hilda (nee Barlow), daughter of Sir Alan Barlow, 2nd Baronet and his wife Nora, (nee Darwin)

Nora Barlow

Emma Nora Barlow was the granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin, who edited and published previously unseen examples of her grandfather's work.- Biography :...

, through whom he is a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

. His older sister is the poet Ruth Padel

Ruth Padel

Ruth Sophia Padel is a British poet, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London. She also writes non-fiction and more recently fiction, broadcasts on wildlife, poetry and literature for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and is Writer in Residence at The Environment Institute,...

.

He was awarded an M.Litt. for his thesis on the inscriptions of Pictland by the University of Edinburgh in 1972. He was a founding member of staff of the Institute of Cornish Studies

Institute of Cornish Studies

The Institute of Cornish Studies is a research institute in west Cornwall: it started in 1970/71 as a research centre jointly funded by Exeter University and Cornwall County Council, with three core staff being employees of the University of Exeter...

 (in the Charles Thomas

Charles Thomas (historian)

Antony Charles Thomas, CBE, FSA is a British historian and archaeologist who was Professor of Cornish Studies at Exeter University, and the first Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, from 1971 until his retirement in 1991...

 era), until around 1991, when he moved to Cambridge.

He is President of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland

Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland

The Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland is a learned society for members with interests in proper names, including place names, personal names and surnames relating to the British Isles....

, and of the English Place-Name Society

English Place-Name Society

The English Place-Name Society is a learned society concerned with toponomastics and the toponymy of England, in other words, the study of place-names ....

.
He edits the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall

Royal Institution of Cornwall

The Royal Institution of Cornwall was founded in Truro, Cornwall, United Kingdom, in 1818 as the Cornwall Literary and Philosophical Institution. The Institution was one of the earliest of seven similar societies established in England and Wales. The RIC moved to its present site in River Street...

. He is a Member of Council of the Devon and Cornwall Record Society.

Linguistic and literary studies

• Arthur in medieval Welsh literature (Writers of Wales series); Cardiff : University of Wales Press, 2000. ISBN 0708316824 (pbk) 0708316891 (hbk)

• Cornish place-name elements ( English Place-Name Society series, v.56/57); Nottingham : English Place-Name Society, 1985. ISBN 0904889114 : No price

• A popular dictionary of Cornish place-names; Penzance : A. Hodge, 1988. ISBN 090672015X

Editions, translations and other contributions

• A commodity of good names: essays in honour of Margaret Gelling
  Margaret Gelling
  Margaret Joy Gelling, OBE was an English toponymist, Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, and member of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the British Academy....
  
  ; edited by O.J. Padel and David N. Parsons. Donington, Lincolnshire : Shaun Tyas, 2008. ISBN 9781900289900 (hbk.)

• The Cornish lands of the Arundells of Lanherne, fourteenth to sixteenth centuries / edited by H. S. A. Fox and O. J. Padel. (Devon and Cornwall Record Society. New series ; v. 41); Exeter : Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 2000. ISBN 0901853410 (pbk.)

• The Cornish writings of the Boson family. Nicholas, Thomas and John Boson, of Newlyn: circa 1660 to 1730. Edited with translations and notes by O. J. Padel; Redruth: Institute of Cornish Studies, 1975. ISBN 0903686090

• Domesday book / text and translation edited by John Morris. 10, Cornwall / edited by Caroline and Frank Thorn from a draft translation prepared by Oliver Padel (History from the sources series); Chichester : Phillimore, 1979. ISBN 0850331560 (hbk) 0850331552 (pbk)

• Gascoyne, Joel A map of the county of Cornwall, 1699 ; reprinted in facsimile with an introduction by W. L. D. Ravenhill and O. J. Padel (Devon and Cornwall Record Society : new series ; vol. 34.); Exeter : Devon and Cornwall Record Society, 1991.

• Padel, O J. Two new pre-conquest charters for Cornwall. Cornish Studies 6, 1979. pp20–27.

• Royal Institution of Cornwall: Exhibition of manuscripts and printed books on the Cornish language (15th c.-1904). [Compiled by O. J. Padel.]; [Redruth:] Institute of Cornish Studies, 1975. Note: Arranged in association with the 5th International Congress of Celtic Studies, held at Penzance.

• A medieval Cornish miscellany / W. M. M. Picken ; edited by O. J. Padel; Chichester : Phillimore, 2000. ISBN 1860770983

• Thomas, Charles, (1928- ) A provisional list of imported pottery in post-Roman Western Britain & Ireland / Charles Thomas ; (with an appendix on Tintagel by O. J. Padel) (Special report ; no.7); Redruth : Institute of Cornish Studies, 1981. ISBN 0903686333