Bannau Brycheiniog: Views on national park's name change

[Justin Swanton]

Re using numbers for streets there's this.

Ah! My happy childhood days on 102819 Street! That razor wire sparkling in the sun!   (you can see I'm bored)

[Erpingham]

"Cougait" must be Scots.  With the "gait" bit meaning street like it does in northern English dialect? And surely, Edinburgh was a Scots speaking area, not a Gaelic one?

Justin will be no doubt pleased that Yorkshire folk also tend to shorten long town names, so Tod (Todmorden), Brid (Bridlington), Donny (Doncaster), Scunny (Scunthorpe, just across the border).

I'm trying to think of another link back to military history - anyone else got one ?

[Imperial Dave]

for my backyard plenty of interesting place names

Pont y Saeson (Saxons Bridge - potential site for Battle of Tintern)
Maes Arthur (Arthur's Field - potential site for Battle including Osla Big Knife)
Magor - 'ruined' walls
Portskewett - Shielded harbour
Caerwent - fortified enclosure of Venta

etc etc

[Anton]

Gait would be Gate, pronounced on the Borders and further south as G'yett.  I've seen that written as Yett too but have only heard it as G'yett.  As in Ah cud lowp a 5 bar g'yett meaning I could jump over a 5 bar gate.

I'm currently of the view that Edinburgh probably transitioned towards English with the influx of English refugees in Queen Margaret's time.  The last King of Scots to be fluent in Gaelic fell at Flodden.  If the King spoke it others did too.

The development of Scots is interesting there seems to be a lot of Scandinavian words likewise in Northumbria.

Everyone says Danes but the pronounciation and some of the words strike me as more like Swedish.

[Erpingham]

Gait would be Gate, pronounced on the Borders and further south as G'yett.  I've seen that written as Yett too but have only heard it as G'yett.  As in Ah cud lowp a 5 bar g'yett meaning I could jump over a 5 bar gate.

Possible.  It could also refer to the gate in the wall they took cows through.  Without knowing the location, its speculation.  But I still think gate from Norse gata = street is likely.

[Erpingham]

I was hoping, Dave, you might consider why what used to be known as the Battle of Pilleth is now called the battle of Bryn Glas.  Both names are Welsh in origin.

Actually, I think this is one of those where it's about naming conventions - do you name a battle after the local village or the place it was actually fought (in this case, a hill called Bryn Glas)?

[Anton]

It is certainly where the cows came in. In Edinburgh it is low lying in Leith.  Gate could function as both gate and street maybe.

[Andreas Johansson]

Everyone says Danes but the pronounciation and some of the words strike me as more like Swedish.

Swedish being more phonologically conservative than Danish, modern Swedish probably sounds more like Viking Age Danish than what modern Danish does.

[Imperial Dave]

I was hoping, Dave, you might consider why what used to be known as the Battle of Pilleth is now called the battle of Bryn Glas.  Both names are Welsh in origin.

Actually, I think this is one of those where it's about naming conventions - do you name a battle after the local village or the place it was actually fought (in this case, a hill called Bryn Glas)?

Bryn glas is blue/green hill.
Pilleth is a corruption of pwll lleth or overwhelming pool or pit

The second sounds much more drammatic

[Mark G]

It makes much more sense as a Scot's word, I'll stand corrected on that happily

[Nick Harbud]

You're in Wales!

    

[Jon Freitag]

While this topic has meandered a bit, it has been enlightening. 

Out in the New World and specifically the Pacific Northwest of the USA, the move to revert to pre-conquest (well, 19th century for the Pacific Northwest) naming conventions especially when names were considered derogatory is alive and well.

As one local example, my fair city, Spokane, Washington has a minor league baseball club.  The old club logo was,
.

The word, "Indian" was deemed offensive so the team name and logo were changed into the local Salish language.  The city name is now rendered in native Salish as,

with the new team logo showing,
.

I expected the renaming (rebranding) to include the names the peoples called themselves because the names are very descriptive.  How does this new logo translate from Salish to English?

Spokane Indians Baseball Club...

Well, at least someone tried.

[Jim Webster]

for my backyard plenty of interesting place names

Pont y Saeson (Saxons Bridge - potential site for Battle of Tintern)
Maes Arthur (Arthur's Field - potential site for Battle including Osla Big Knife)
Magor - 'ruined' walls
Portskewett - Shielded harbour
Caerwent - fortified enclosure of Venta

etc etc

Surely if you were decolonising the language Caerwent would become Venta Silurum?   

The problem with Welsh is which Welsh, Kitchen Welsh or High Welsh?
A friend of my late mother was from a Church of Wales family, her great Uncle (or Uncle, I'm going from memory now) was a leading churchman who translated the Bible into Welsh. But he did it from Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, rather than just from the King James.
His comment about Welsh was the problem was that Kitchen Welsh differed from valley to valley, so that what was an affectionate nickname in one valley could be a killing insult ten miles away.
And in his words, High Welsh was a superb language in which to plan a cattle raid or boast about it afterwards.
It could be that his work was one of the things which helped create a 'modern' 'unified' Welsh. Which isn't unusual, it is often held that Martin Luther, with his writing, helped unify the German language. And the King James Bible has had a powerful effect on unifying English. In fact I've talked to Nigerians who have less trouble with the King James than I have because they, to a considerable extent, learned their English through it

[Imperial Dave]

very true re different forms - old welsh and high medieval welsh are different and both different again to Brittonic proto Welsh.

re Venta Silurum - thats a Latin name if we are to be picky it should be Llanmelin but even that doesnt work really.... 

[Duncan Head]

Surely if you were decolonising the language Caerwent would become Venta Silurum? 

Wouldn't that be recolonising? Latin isn't exactly indigenous.

(though indigenous is inexactly Latin...)