Skip to main content

Happy Donkey Hill or Faerdre Fach

BBC News Video : Campaigners call for law to protect Welsh place-names


Stories are what make toponymy interesting and the two names featured in this video tell two simple stories.

The old name, Faerdre Fach, is medieval - dating back to the 14th century.
Faerdref or maerdref, indicates a dairy hamlet on demesne land (feudal land owned and managed by the lord for his own purposes). 

 

These dairy-houses were kept at a little distance from the castles and courts of noblemen and the bonded tenants who lived there supplied dairy and other food products to their feudal lords.  There were two farmhouses here and they were called Faerdre Fawr, ‘great’ and Faerdre Fach, ‘little’.


It's great to know that 700 years later Faedre Fach is still a farm with hens and cows. But it is also a holiday site featuring B&B, self-catering cottages and a riding school. The tourists, of course, can't pronounce the name properly and, more importantly, would find it difficult to remember. Happy Donkey Hill Farm seems rather more appropriate for a business and, given the resident donkeys, why not? 
The actual farm is not going to change its name so there is no stark choice as the video seems to make out. I think both names can work well together.


The other examples given in the video tell of a more protracted fight over linguistic ownership of place names. Again the place names are telling us stories. Stories about the landscape and what it was used for. 
I have given the Welsh name, followed by a literal English translation. The contested English name follows in brackets. 

Porth Crugmor...'barrow (burial mound) cove' (Cable Bay)
Cwm Cneifion...'shearing valley'  (Nameless Cwm)
Cribarth...'bear ridge'  (Sleeping Giant)
Ynys-las...'green island' (Sausage Island)

I can't see how any of the English names is an 'improvement' on the original, and it seems such a shame to lose these wonderful 'linguistic monuments' simply because people cannot pronounce the names. 

The irony here is that Welsh (unlike English)is a phonetic language - words are pronounced as they are written. 
All you have to do is follow a few simple rules:








Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What really links place names in Brittany, Cornwall and Wales (apart from a few hundred Celtic saints)?

Place Name Elements in Breton, Welsh and Cornish (with examples and English gloss) BRETON CORNISH WELSH ENGLISH EXAMPLES C=Cornwall; W= Wales aut , alt, aod alt, als, aulz allt hill, slope, cliff Duault (22), Nansalsa (C), Allt-golau (W) ael ael ael summit, brow, ridge Hirael (35), Aelbryn (W) aval aval, avallen afal, afallen apple Availles-sur-Seiche (35), Rosevallen (C), Dolafallen (W) aon, aven auon, awan afon river Pont-Aven (29); Arrowan (C), Aberavon (W) arcae - argae dam, embankment Erquy (22), Argae Alwen (W) ard, art, arz are, ard, arth ardd hill, elevation Arzon (56); Trenarth (C), Pennard (W) arz, arzh art, arth arth bear Île-d'Arz (56), Carn Arthen (C), Aber-arth (W) ascorn - asgwrn, esgyrn bone/s Coatascorn (

Why all the Ermine?

The ermine ( Mustela erminea ) a.k.a. stoat or short-tailed weasel  is the national emblem of Brittany. Its much sought after white winter coat was used for the cloaks, crowns and caps of the aristocracy. Ermine The eleven 'ermine spots' which form the pattern in the top left corner of the Breton flag represent the way the black-tipped tails were hung on the white fur.  This heraldic ermine canton was a feature of the arms of the Dukes of Brittany.  Breton flag with ermine canton The story goes that Anne de Bretagne,  the last independent Breton ruler and the wife of two successive French kings,   saw a group of hunters chasing after an ermine. When the ermine reached the edge of a muddy lake the ermine decided to stand up to his attackers rather than risk soiling his beautiful white fur.  ANNE DE BRETAGNE Anne, it appears, was so impressed that she saved the ermine and adopted it as the emblem of her dynasty along with the motto: Plutôt la mort que la

The legend of Saint Gwen of Brittany and Dorset

The church of Whitchurch-Canonicorum in Dorset is dedicated to Saint-Candida (a.k.a Saint-Wite). Below the east window there is an altar tomb with  three openings which allowed devotees to reach inside the shrine in the hope of a miraculous cure for whatever ailed them.  On the top of this there used to be a 14th century coffin built into a slab of local marble. When the local vicar opened it in 1848 he found a stone box. Inside the stone box he discovered a Saint's relics.  When the coffin was examined again in 1899 another vicar found teeth, a lot of  bones resembling those of small, forty year old woman and an inscription: Here lie the relics of Saint Wite What was even more extrordinary about this find was that all relics such as these had been destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. The only other collection of saint's remains still extant were those of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Perhaps this shrine looked more like a tomb then a