Robert Lee Ramsay (December 14, 1880 – December 14, 1953) was a professor of English at the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...

from 1907 to 1952. Starting in the mid-1920s, Ramsay started to develop a dictionary of

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

placenames, creating a methodology and overseeing graduate research on the topic. Due to widespread availability of the book, ''Our Storehouse of Missouri Place Names'', Ramsay is the best known authority of the subject in Missouri. His research is used for official citations by the

United States Board on Geographic Names The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal govern ...

. Ramsay was a founding member of the American Name Society.

External links

American Name Society
*''Our Storehouse of Missouri Place Names'', 2nd. Edition, Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1973 1880 births 1953 deaths Toponymists University of Missouri faculty Writers from Columbia, Missouri {{US-English-academic-bio-stub