「#5227. 古英語の名前研究のための原資料」 ([2023-08-19-1]) で触れたとおり，Domesday Book は古英語の名前研究の一級の資料である．
Domesday Book とは何か．一言でいえば，William I が1086年に作らせた，イングランドのほぼ全域を調査した土地台帳（元資料あるいは要約資料）である．慈悲も申し立ての余地もない徹底的な調査ぶりから「最後の審判の日」になぞらえて "Domesday Book" と名付けられた．この名前は12世紀中頃までには一般的な呼称となっていたようである．
人々の反感を買ったものの，この調査は仕事の細かさと速さの点で，中世においておそらく最も偉大な行政的な業績だった．調査は7--8人の委員によって実施され，各々が異なる地域を担当して，王と直接受封者の所領に関する詳細な報告書を編纂した．これらの報告書から王の書記官たちが要約を作成したもの，それが Domesday Book である．
単数形で Domesday Book と呼ばれているが、実際には異なる2つの巻から成り立っている．第1巻 (Great Domesday) は，Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk を除くすべての州の要約記録を含んでいる．これらの3つの州に関しては，要約ではない完全な報告が第2巻 (Little Domesday) に保存されている．
Domesday Book の名前資料としての価値と「使用上の注意」について，Clark (453--54) が解説していることを引用しよう．
For late OE name-forms of both kinds Domesday Book (DB) is the prime source; for many place-names, those from the North especially, it furnishes the earliest record extant . . . . DB proper consists of two volumes (recently rebound as five), always part of the state archives and now housed in the Public Record Office, wherefore they are together known as the 'Exchequer Domesday'. The two sections are, it must be emphasised, of different standing: 'Little DB', which deals with Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, represents a redaction earlier and fuller --- therefore more useful to onomasticians --- than that of 'Great DB', which deals with the rest of the Conqueror's English realm. There are also various related records, usually known as 'satellites', some (like Exon DB) official, others private . . .; on matters ranging from administrative procedure to orthography, these supplement the information given by the Exchequer volumes. Although DB as it stands results from a survey undertaken in 1086, roughly half the material there dates back to pre-Conquest times. Based as they were upon enquiries made by several panels of commissioners who collected documentary as well as oral evidence and interrogated alike French-speaking post-Conquest settlers and survivors of the pre-Conquest land-holding classes, the extant DB texts, in which the commissioners' returns have to varying degrees been recast, need careful handling. At the orthographical level, basic to onomastic study, they are notoriously unreliable. For one thing, not all the scribes used the traditional OE orthography . . . . For another, working conditions were unpropitious: name-material, unlike common vocabulary, cannot be predicted from context, and so the DB clerks, interpreting utterances of witnesses from varied linguistic backgrounds, sometimes perhaps toothless ancients, and editing drafts that bristled with unfamiliarities, were liable to mishear, misread, misunderstand, miscopy or otherwise mangle the forms. Only lately has appreciation of the types and degrees of scribal error in DB made progress enough for former broad assumptions --- for instance, about 'Anglo-Norman influences' --- to be gradually replaced by recognition of specific auditory and visual confusions.
・ Clark, Cecily. "Onomastics." The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 1. Ed. Richard M. Hogg. Cambridge: CUP, 1992. 452--89.
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