Blog

We've spent the past year adding names to the List from various different sources, and now that the work on some of them is complete, we thought it was time to blog about some of the most interesting ones, to give you a closer look at the work of the List.

The first source is the Mynegai i Enwau Lleoedd y Canu Barddol, which we received through the generosity of Prof. Ann Parry-Owen. The name means index to the place names of bardic poetry, and as it suggests, these names come from the huge corpus of medieval Welsh poetry edited by the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. The poems are split into two series, Canu Beirdd y Tywysogion, the Poets of the Princes, who sang to the rulers of independent Wales, and Canu Beirdd yr Uchelwyr, the Poets of the Nobility, after the loss of independence.

As you'll know if you've been following the List since the beginning, there are already lots of medieval names in it, many of them also provided by the Centre. Most of them are Latin forms of Welsh place names, as well as some Norman and early English ones, reflecting the status of Latin as the language of the Church and of administration, and Anglo-Norman as the language of the Norman conquerors. What makes the names from the Mynegai is the fact that they are all in the Welsh language, thus allowing us to see the development of the names of our towns and villages over the centuries. As well as this, we've got Welsh names for places where only English names survive today, names for places which no longer exist, and names which have changed so much that we weren't able to definitively locate them, such as Abermenwenfer in Tywyn, Meirionydd.

One popular theme in the poetry was to praise the splendour of the patron's house, which of course, necessitated using its name. A large number of these houses are still extant, which means that the names from the Mynegai allow us to trace their history back centuries. A good example of this is Mathafarn in Dyffryn Dyfi near Machynlleth, which dates back to at least c.1317. The poets sang to patrons all across Wales, and in those areas now in England which were Welsh speaking at the time, such as Pengwern around Oswestry, Colunwy around Clun, and Ergyng in western Herefordshire, so we've got medieval names from all around the country. We've probably got some local to you! You'll notice that we've included some of these names from England, if they were close to the border, in order to show that Wales used to be bigger than she is now, and that the Welsh language was spoken everywhere.

Keep an eye on the blog for information about the other sources we've been dealing with recently.

You'll have noticed that the 1900 OS map is back online after having disappeared for a few weeks. This was the unfortunate result of some licensing and technological changes under the bonnet that we didn't have control over. We're very pleased to be able to report that the problems have been sorted, and that the technology has been updated. In fact, we're hoping to be able to upload new layers of historic mapping in the future. We apologise for any difficulties that the lack of a map has been causing.

One frequent response that we received in the questionnaires we put out was that the search function needed to be improved and simplified, so that you didn't need to spell the name you were looking for exactly as it appears in the List in order to find anything. In other words, that you can ignore hyphens. This has now been done, and the search function is now easier to use than ever, so we're sure that you'll be able to find even more information!

As well as this, we've also added the ability to search by postcode, so you can find the names near your house more easily. We hope that these changes will improve your experience of using the List, and lead to you spending even more time browsing it.

The List of Historic Place Names has existed for five years now, and a great deal has happened in that time. The List was established in response to growing concerns about threats to our historic place names. The List had two purposes: firstly, to raise awareness of the rich heritage of historic place names and encourage their continuing use, and secondly, to create a ,record of the whole wealth of place names in Wales, so that the names could be preserved, even in those circumstances where they are no longer in active use.

After five years of hard work, we’ve enjoyed a great deal of success. The List now contains just under 700,000 names from 1,254 sources and local authorities are using our data and keeping historic place names alive when naming roads, developments and properties. We’ve given dozens of public talks on place names, online and in person, and some of them are available on the Royal Commission’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffbsi20cfa4 Public recognition of the importance of historic place names has grown since the establishment of the List, but nid da lle gellir gwell, as we say in Welsh.

The fifth anniversary of the List has given us an opportunity to take stock and gauge the opinion of the public and the experts as to how we can strengthen the List and promote it more effectively so that as many people as possible in Wales can learn about our place names. The public filled in a questionnaire giving their views about improving the List, and we formed a task and finish group with representatives from the Welsh Government, local authorities, the Welsh Language Commissioner’s Office and the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies to consider the next steps. This process is now finished, and you can find the task and finish group’s report here: https://rcahmw.gov.uk/five-year-report-the-list-of-historic-place-names/ The recommendations range from improving the functionality of the List, through cultivating fruitful partnerships, to using the List’s resources to develop the National Curriculum. By following the report’s recommendations, we will be able to develop the List further and make sure that Wales’ wealth of place name heritage is kept safe for generations to come.

Those of you who've been following the List's progress from the beginning will recall that we've been adding names from Edward Lhuyd's Parochialia bit by bit for the past few years. Covid and lockdown have both affected the work unfortunately, slowing it quite considerably, and this has been compounded by technical problems. In addition, whilst beavering away at the Parochialia we have also received large ingests of crowd-sourced data from Cynefin and GB1900, which had to be added to the List as quickly as possible. However, er gwaethaf pawb a phopeth as Dafydd Iwan would put it, the final names from the Parochialia were uploaded to the List. The majority of them are names from Gower and the area surrounding Swansea, amongst them several Welsh names for long-anglicised places. 

You can find the Parochialia names arranged by volume here:

Volume one: https://historicplacenames.rcahmw.gov.uk/placenames/search?q=&cty=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&src=38f920f0-e6d3-463d-a909-14fe9408ec92&yrf=&yrt=

Volume two: https://historicplacenames.rcahmw.gov.uk/placenames/search?q=&cty=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&src=90b9eca5-448e-437b-a828-71fbda65a251&yrf=&yrt=&s=1&ps=10

Volume three: https://historicplacenames.rcahmw.gov.uk/placenames/search?q=&cty=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&src=2b91c097-4836-4442-886e-c38d9ef29fd0&yrf=&yrt=&s=1&ps=10

Or if you would prefer to look at everything all together, you can do so here: https://historicplacenames.rcahmw.gov.uk/placenames/search?q=&cty=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&src=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&yrf=1699&yrt=1699&s=1&ps=10

Edward Lhuyd, the creator of the Parochialia was one of the most important figures of his age, and a huge contributor to scholarship in the fields of Welsh and Celtic Studies. Whilst Curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, he sent three copies of a questionnaire to each parish in Wales asking for linguistic, geographical, onomastic and scientific information about the parish. The responses were published in three volumes in Archeologia Cambrensis in 1908. They are an eclectic mix of languages, ranging from Welsh to English to Latin, sometimes within the same paragraph, but form a treasure trove of information about Wales at the turn of the eighteenth century. We have focused on recording the names themselves, as you would expect, but when a bit of information about the location in question was given, such as the name of the owner or tenant of the house, or a little of the area's history, we have put it in the notes section, as an aid to the historian or the genealogist.

Unfortunately, it has not proven possible to discover the precise location of each name. Many of the parishes, particularly in the north-east and south-east, have changed considerably over the course of the two centuries since the compilation of the Parochialia, and many names have disappeared beneath the towns and industries that sprung up in those areas. Despite this, the names are in the List, and you can find them in the geographical centre of the relevant parish. If you happen to know where one or more of these are, please let us know so that we can put them in the correct places. You can contact us here: https://historicplacenames.rcahmw.gov.uk/contact

The work of adding new names to the List continues; the next source we plan to upload is a collection of papers from Argoed, Talybont, Ceredigion, which were given to us by the owner of the farm. We'll discuss these in more depth once the names have been uploaded.

The List of Historic Place Names has been in existence for almost five years now, and in that time we've passed several significant milestones. We've doubled the number of names in the List, to just under 700,000, spanning the second century AD to today. This is due to the hard work of our partners in the larger projects like Cynefin and GB1900, to community groups like Menter Iaith Sir Benfro, and to you, the public, for sending us in your place names.

We've briefed the Senedd, and local government, on how the List can support their work, and how the use of historic place names can overcome some thorny issues in and around naming streets and places. Local authorities and a wide range of public bodies in Wales are making use of our data, and the statistics that we've collected suggest that we've been able to make a difference on the ground, with more people choosing to rethink their initial decision to change a historic place name.

We've given dozens of talks to community groups and historical conferences across the country, and you might have heard us talking about place names on Radio Cymru.

We're very aware, however, that there is still lots to be done. That's why we've launched a user survey on the website, in order to find out how and why you, the public, are using the site, and how you feel that it could be improved. It's vital that as many people as possible respond, so that we can get the best idea possible of how we can work even harder to protect our place name heritage. You can find the survey here: https://form.jotform.com/220324218040338