Richard Coates (born 16 April 1949, in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and educated at Wintringham School) is an English linguist. He was Professor of Linguistics (alternatively Professor of Onomastics) at the University of the West of England, Bristol, now emeritus. From 1977 to 2006 he taught at the University of Sussex, where he served as Professor of Linguistics (1991–2006) and as Dean of the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (1998–2003). From 1980 to 1989 he was assistant secretary and then secretary of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. He was honorary director of the Survey of English Place-Names from 2003 to 2019, having previously (1997–2002) served as president of the English Place-Name Society which conducts the Survey, resuming this role from 2019 to 2024. From 2002 to 2008, he was secretary of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, a body devoted to the promotion of the study of names, and elected as one of its two vice-presidents from 2011 to 2017. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1992 and of the Royal Society of Arts in 2001.

His main academic interests are proper names (both from the historical and the theoretical perspective), historical linguistics in general, the philology of the Germanic, Romance and Celtic languages, regional variation in language, and local history. He is editor of the Survey of English Place-Names for Hampshire and was principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project Family Names of the United Kingdom (FaNUK), running from 2010 to 2016, of which Patrick Hanks was lead researcher.

He has written books on the names of the Channel Islands, the local place-names of St Kilda, Hampshire and Sussex, the dialect of Sussex, and, with Andrew Breeze, on Celtic place-names in England, as well as over 500 academic articles, notes, and collections on related topics. His main contribution to linguistic theory is The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood, set out in a number of articles since 2000.^[1][2][3][4]

He is also the author of Word Structure, a student's introduction to linguistic morphology (Routledge), and of online resources on Shakespeare's character-names and on the place-names of Hayling Island.

• Etymology of London

1977 The status of rules in historical phonology. Doctoral dissertation 10301, University of Cambridge. [Unpublished.]

1987 (co-ed. with John Lyons, Margaret Deuchar and Gerald Gazdar) New horizons in linguistics 2. Harmondsworth: Pelican; pp. viii + 465 (ISBN 978-0-14-022612-6).

1988 Toponymic topics: essays on the early toponymy of the British Isles. Brighton: Younsmere Press; pp. v + 124 (ISBN 0-9512309-1-3).

1989 The place-names of Hampshire. London: Batsford; pp. vii + 193 (ISBN 0-7134-5625-6).

1990 The place-names of St Kilda: nomina hirtensia. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press (ISBN 9780199677764 Celtic Studies 1); pp. viii + 221 (ISBN 0-88946-077-9).

1991 The ancient and modern names of the Channel Islands: a linguistic history. Stamford: Paul Watkins; pp. xiv + 144 (ISBN 1-871615-15-1).

1992 (ed.) De A.B.C. psalms by Jim Cladpole (James Richards). Brighton: Younsmere Press; pp. 46 (ISBN 0-9512309-6-4).

1993 Hampshire place-names. Southampton: Ensign Publications. Paperback edition of The place-names of Hampshire; pp. 193 (ISBN 185455 090 X).

1996–2007 (ed.) Locus focus: forum of the Sussex place-names net (7 vols, 14 issues).

1999 The place-names of West Thorney. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society (supplementary series 1); pp. v + 64 (ISBN 0904889 52 1).

1999 Word structure. London and New York: Routledge (Routledge Language Workbooks); pp. ix + 101 (ISBN 0 415 20631 6). [Student guide to morphology. Also available as an e-book from 2005.]

2000 (with Andrew Breeze; including a contribution by David Horovitz) Celtic voices, English places: studies of the Celtic impact on place-names in England. Stamford: Shaun Tyas; pp. xiv + 433 (ISBN 1-900289-41-5).

2006 (guest ed.) Name theory. Special issue of Onoma, vol. 41 (spine date 2006; appeared 2011); pp. 309 (ISSN 0078-463X, eISSN 1783-1644).

2007 The place-names of Hayling Island, Hampshire. [MS. of 1991. Web-publication; http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/llas/staff_coates_r_hayling.doc; pp. 96.]

2010 A place-name history of the parishes of Rottingdean and Ovingdean in Sussex (including Woodingdean and Saltdean). Nottingham: English Place-Name Society (Regional series 2); pp. xviii + 222, ISBN 978-0-904889-84-0. [Published with the aid of a grant from the British Academy.]

2010 The traditional dialect of Sussex: a history, description, selected texts, bibliography and discography. Lewes: Pomegranate Press; pp. 349. (ISBN 978-1-907242-09-0.) [Published with the aid of a grant from the Marc Fitch Fund.]

2016 (co-ed. with Patrick Hanks and Peter McClure) The Oxford dictionary of family names in the United Kingdom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (ISBN 9780199677764; also ebook and online versions.)

2017 Wilkins of Westbury and Redland: the life and writings of the Rev. Dr Henry John Wilkins (1865-1941). Bristol: Avon Local History Association pamphlet 24.

2017 Your city's place-names: Brighton and Hove. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society. (ISBN 9780904889970.)

2017 Your city's place-names: Bristol. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society. (ISBN 9780904889963.)

2018 (guest ed. with Katalin Reszegi) Onomastica Uralica 11. (ISSN 1586-3719, ISSN 2061-0661.)

2019 Places, names and history in north-west Bristol: Shirehampton, Avonmouth and King’s Weston. Bristol: Bristol Centre for Linguistics, University of the West of England.

2019 Your city's place-names: Cambridge. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society.

2020 (co-ed. with Luisa Caiazzo and Maoz Azaryahu) Naming, identity and tourism. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. (ISBN 1527542866, ISBN 9781527542860.)

2020 (guest co-ed. with Martyna Gibka) Explorations in literary onomastic theory. Special issue of Onoma, vol. 53 (spine date 2018; to appear 2020).

• [1], University of the West of England: Richard Coates, where a list of his main recent publications can be found.