Re: CHAT: silly names

At 8:03 pm +1100 17/3/01, D Tse wrote:
>> >The official name consists of the first 20 letters."
>>
>> Namely: Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
>>
>> Yep - that's what it's normally called in Welsh, when it's not shortened
>> simply to _Llanfair_.  But as there are so very many places called
>> _Llanfair_ ("Mary church"), one normally has to add a bit extra.
>>
>> Llan = church, parish, village (<-- Old Brit. _landa_ ultimately connected
>> with Germanic _land_ & French _lande_)
>> Mair = Mary.  In a compound noun the second noun undergoes 'soft mutation'
>> so: llanfair = "Marychurch", "Maryvillage".
>>
>> pwll = 'pool' or 'pit'.  Here it means 'pool'
>> gwyn = 'white', and is one of the few adjectives placed before the noun
>> rather than after it.  Such adjectives always cause the following noun to
>> undergo soft mutation.
>>
>> =========================================
>
>
>... etc
>
>Can someone tell me if such agglutinations are meant to be common in Welsh?
*Pwllgwyngyll would not be odd as a place name.  After all, _pwll gwyn
gyll_ as perfectly grammatical and acceptable Welsh as "white hazels pool"
is in English.

But Llanfairpwllgwyngyll is probably about as long as any genuine place
name gets, and is longer than the typical.

_Penrhyndeudraeth_ however does not seem odd.  It composed basically of two
elements _penrhyn_ (promontory) and _deudraeth_ "double-shored", i.e. with
sand on both sides.  The second element is a compound from: dau (two) +
traeth (beach).

I think the Victorian railway builders found names like Penrhyndeudreath a
bit "exotic" and realized their possible tourist appeal, so they seemed to
have taken to 'touching up' some local names, no doubt to the amusement
(and satisfaction when tourists spent money) of the locals.
Llanfair.......ogogogoch" is just an extreme example of the GWR's
imagination and _not_ typical of Welsh place names.

And the urge to change names to attract tourists was not confined to 19th
cent. Wales.  In England the seaside resort hitherto known simply as
"Weston-on-Sea" became, and still remains, "Weston-super-mare" (tho, alas,
the last word is pronounced as tho it were a female horse!), and another
seaside town, hitherto known as "Poulton", suddenly becomes, and still
remains, "Morecombe" after 18th cent. antiquarians discovered that there'd
been a place somewhere around there called _Moricambe_ by the ancient
geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus.

Even wierder IMO is the renaming of the Western Isles as the "Hebrides"
which is derived from a misreading of ancient _Hebudes_ or, in most
authorities, _Ebudae_, especially the location of the ancient _Ebudae_ is
uncertain (they may be islands of Ireland).  But tourists like it  ;)

But to get back to length of Welsh names.  They are no longer than many
good ol' English place names like, e.g. Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Piddletrenthide, Chorton-cum-Hardy,
Bourton-on-the-Water, Mapleborough Green etc etc etc.

Ray.




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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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