Pittencrieff | Toponymy | Forum

Dr Simon Taylor rightly takes me to task for an elementary gaffe: I failed to notice that the only Pittencrieff which came up when I searched the web version of his vast tome (https://fife-placenames.glasgow.ac.uk/placename/?id=2700) is a farm 1.4km north of the site of Cupar Castle. There is no real scope for herons here. He seems willing to dismiss the spelling variation as idiosyncratic However referencing a tree (or even a copse) in this area is hardly the sort of identifier to help the would-be visitor/delivery man.

Kindly he also offers that the earliest extant record we have for the Pittencrieff in Dunfermline dates from 1291 in the form "Petyncreff".
So we are left with the question of what to make of this Pittencrieff before the Gaels overran the area c850?
It is possible that there was "nothing" there apart from the fort and it is true that the riverbank is veritably smothered in trees. But for his explanation to work, these trees would need to have been remarkable in some particular way.

There is a possible solution to this: Perhaps the Pittencrieff near Cupar is a name transferred from Dunfermline (we do know that some people held parcels of land all over the county/kingdom) - the 1294 form retaining/betraying the old spelling of the Dunfermline Pittencrieff!

I acknowledge that the lack of data plunges us into speculation here - but this is the logically more simple solution and it remains remarkable that the form "creher" means "heron" and that there are herons at Pittencrieff Park. I am also of the view that some other placenames in Scotland with a "crieff" element are also corruptions.
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