Work for the series »Placenames of the Isle of Man« is undertaken under the auspices of the Manx Place-Name Survey, set up at the University of Mannheim in 1988. The survey falls into two parts: material collected from a) oral, and b) documentary sources. Place-name material, mostly Manx Gaelic, for the first part, was collected on sound-recordings or in phonetic script 1989-1992 from some 200 informants, almost exclusively from the farming community. The second part contains material drawn from documentary sources of 13th-20th century date, but mostly from 17th-19th centuries.

This is the final volume in the series »Placenames of the Isle of Man«. Six volumes, based on the Sheadings (districts) of Glenfaba, Michael, Ayre, Garff, Middle and Rushen, are already published. Volume 7 includes the town of Douglas (capital), place-name and field-name addenda, as well as complete indexes of place-name elements, place-names, field-names, and personal names. In addition are the following four articles: »Place-Names and the Physical and Human Geography of the Isle of Man: an Overview« (Peter Darvey), »Pre-Scandinavian Place-Names in the Isle of Man« (George Broderick), »The Scandinavian Element in the Place-Names of the Isle of Man« (Gillian Fellows-Jensen), and »Common Elements in Manx Place-Names« (George Broderick). To complete the volume are 17 parish maps containing the traditional land divisions of treen and quarterland.