Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 June 15

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June 15

English places with Welsh names

The other day I came across the village of Llanyblodwel, which, despite its name, is a village in Shropshire, England. Are there many other places in England with obviously Welsh names? If so, are they generally along the Welsh border, like Llanyblodwel, or are there any that are more distant? 115.166.16.149 (talk) 08:34, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

A quick look at any road atlas will show a string of Welsh place names on the English side of the border, along most of its length. The largest concentration is in the middle, in Shropshire and Herefordshire - these being the areas where English penetration in the Middle Ages was much slower, and the border remained undefined for a much longer period. Further east it is much more difficult to find obviously Welsh names, though there are some very well known historic towns with names which probably have an ancient Celtic origin, dating back to the period before the Roman invasion. You have to recall that the Welsh are descended from the Celtic Britons, who occupied the whole of the country before the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Lincoln is a good example - it probably derives from a Celtic word for a pool, lindon, related distantly to the modern Welsh llyn. The Romans latinized it to Lindum Colonia - which then evolved to become Lincoln. Wymspen (talk) 08:58, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

We have an article - Welsh place names in other countries. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:58, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

... and another which may be closer to answering the question - Celtic toponymy#Brythonic. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:28, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Ghmyrtle, I found the article Welsh toponymy before but I didn't find the "place names in other countries" one. It's funny, I never realised that "Aber-" was Welsh as well as Scottish. 115.166.16.149 (talk) 14:02, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I found Place-Names of Shropshire - Shropshire's Welsh Names from the University of Wales that lists Bettws-y-Crwyn, Llanvair Waterdine, Llanymynech, Trefarclawdd and Argoed as examples.

Further afield, there are a few Welsh-sounding names, but they tend to have their roots in the Common Brittonic that was spoken all over (what is now) England before the arrival of those rude Angles and Saxons, as Wymspen says above. One of the best known is Pen-y-ghent, a hill in the Yorkshire Dales, which comes from the Cumbric language, although the "Pen-y" prefix (meaning "head of") is also found all over Wales (Pen-y-darren, Pen-y-clawdd, Pen y Fan and so on). The Cornish language, which has some mutual intelligibility with Welsh, also throws up a few rather Welsh-sounding names like Penryn (compare with Penrhyn in Gwynedd). Alansplodge (talk) 17:33, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

My favourite Anglo-Welsh place name is Knockin in Shropshire, thought to be derived from the Welsh Cnycyn; if you drive through the village, you can see the famous Knockin Shop (if you don't get the joke, see this). Alansplodge (talk) 18:02, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

"If this house is Knockin', don't come rockin'." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:24, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

• There is the Welsh tract in Pennsylvania, where there are tons of neighborhoods and street names based on Welsh names. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 17:34, 21 June 2016 (UTC)