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Revision as of 02:31, 29 March 2014
Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
| |
|---|---|
| Population | 3,040 (2001 UK census) |
| Community |
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| Principal area | |
| Preserved county | |
| Country | Wales |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLL |
| Postcode district | LL61 |
| Dialling code | 01248 |
| Police | North Wales |
| Fire | North Wales |
| Ambulance | Welsh |
| UK Parliament | |
| Senedd Cymru – Welsh Parliament | |
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (pronounced Template:IPA-cy) is a large village and community on the island of Anglesey in Wales, situated on the Menai Strait next to the Britannia Bridge and across the strait from Bangor. With 58 characters it has the longest place name in Europe and one of the longest place names in the world. The short form of the name is Llanfairpwllgwyngyll or Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll. It is commonly known as Llanfair PG or Llanfairpwll.
At the 2001 census the population of the community was 3,040,[1] 76% of whom speak Welsh fluently; the highest percentage of speakers is in the 10–14 age group, where 97.1% speak Welsh.[citation needed] It is the sixth largest settlement on the island by population.
Visitors stop at the railway station to be photographed next to the station sign, visit the nearby Visitors' Centre, or have 'passports' stamped at a local shop. Another tourist attraction is the nearby Marquess of Anglesey's Column, which at a height of 27 metres (89 ft) offers views over Anglesey and the Menai Strait. Designed by Thomas Harrison, the monument celebrates the heroism of Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey at the Battle of Waterloo.
Name
The long form of the name is the longest officially recognised place name in the United Kingdom and one of the longest in the world at 58 characters (51 letters since "ch" and "ll" are digraphs, or single letters, in the Welsh language).
The name means: [St.] Mary's Church (Llanfair) [in] the hollow (pwll) of the white hazel (gwyngyll) near (goger) the rapid whirlpool (y chwyrndrobwll) [and] the church of [St.] Tysilio (llantysilio) with a red cave ([a]g ogo goch).
This village was originally known as Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll (and is sometimes still referred to as Llanfairpwllgwyngyll) and was given its long name in the 19th century in an attempt to develop it as a commercial and tourist centre (see Significance of the name below). The village is still signposted Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, marked on Ordnance Survey maps as Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll and known to locals as Llanfairpwll or Llanfair.
The name is also shortened to Llanfair PG, which is sufficient to distinguish it from the many other Welsh villages with Llanfair in their names. Other variant forms use the full name but with tysilio mutated to dysilio, and/or with a hyphen between drobwll and llan. In Welsh, the initial Ll may be mutated to a single L in some contexts.
Significance of the name
The long name cannot be considered an authentic Welsh-language toponym. It was artificially contrived in the 1860s to bestow upon the station the honour of having the longest name of any railway station in Britain, an early example of a publicity stunt. The village's web site credits the name to a cobbler from the local village of Menai Bridge. According to Sir John Morris-Jones the name was created by a local tailor, whose name he did not confide, letting the secret die with him. The current postmark shows the name Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, but there are contemporary examples of the full name seen below. The name was used in the 1960's cult film Barbarella (Jane Fonda) as the password for Dildano's headquarters: Dildano: [radioing instructions to the rebel army] And our password will be... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Barbarella: You mean the secret password is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? Dildano: Exactly.
The village was originally known as 'Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll' "St Mary's church in [the township named] hollow of the white hazel." 'Pwllgwyngyll' was the original mediaeval township where the village is today.[2] Old variants (with the Welsh spelling normalized) were Llanfair y Pwllgwyngyll ("y" = '(of) the'), and Llanfair Ymhwll Gwyngyll ('mh' is a sandhi change from 'n p', and "yn" = 'in').
The village is split into two smaller villages, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-uchaf (Upper Llanfairpwllgwyngyll), the original part of the village, and Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-isaf (Lower Llanfairpwllgwyngyll), the newer area nearer the railway station. These are occasionally referred to as Pentre Uchaf and Pentre Isaf (Upper Village and Lower Village).
Pronunciation
The full name of the village is Template:IPA-cy, or with [ɪ] for [ɨ̞], [pʊɬ, bʊɬ] for [puɬ, buɬ], depending on the speaker's accent.
The approximate pronunciation in English orthography is given at the station as: Llan-vire-pooll-guin-gill-go-ger-u-chwurn-drob-ooll-llantus-ilio-gogo-goch. The ch is a voiceless uvular fricative [χ] or voiceless velar fricative as in "Bach" ([bax]: see ach-Laut) in most varieties of German. The ll is a voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ], a sound that does not occur in English and is sometimes approximated as [θl] (thl as in athlete) or even [xl] by English speakers. There is even a song on iTunes with a lesson on how to pronounce the name.
Rival names
There have been several attempts to steal the village's record:
- The Carmarthenshire village of Llanfynydd unofficially adopted the name Llanhyfryddawelllehynafolybarcudprindanfygythiadtrienusyrhafnauole in 2004 in protest at plans to erect a wind farm nearby (the name means "a quiet beautiful village; a historic place with rare kite under threat from wretched blades").
- A station on the Fairbourne Railway was named Gorsafawddacha'idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion (translated as "the Mawddach station and its dragon under the northern peace of the Penrhyn Road on the golden beach of Cardigan Bay") for promotional purposes.
No such attempts have gained widespread recognition amongst official bodies or transport authorities.
History
A settlement has existed on the site of the village since the Neolithic era (4000-2000 BC), with subsistence agriculture and fishing the most common occupations for much of its early history. The island of Anglesey was at that point reachable only by boat across the Menai Strait. The area was briefly invaded and captured by the Romans under Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, temporarily abandoned in order to consolidate forces against Boudicca, then held until the end of Roman Britain.
With the withdrawal of the Roman forces, the area fell under the control of the early mediaeval Kingdom of Gwynedd. Under this feudal system, the residents worked small farms for the king. The rural nature of the settlement meant that the village had a population of only around 80 in 1563.
With the introduction of estates in the 16th century, much of the land was absorbed into the Earldom of Uxbridge, which later became the Marquisate of Anglesey; the inhabitants became tenant farmers on enclosures. In 1844, for example, 92% of the land in Llanfairpwll was owned by just 3 individuals. The population of the village boomed, with a population of 385 in the 1801 census and 83 houses, most of them in the old village (Pentre Uchaf, Upper Village).
In 1826, Anglesey was connected to the rest of Wales by the construction of the Menai Suspension Bridge by Thomas Telford, and connected with London in 1850 with the building of the Britannia Bridge and the busy North Wales Coast railway line, which connected London to the ferry port of Holyhead. The village decentralised, splitting into Upper Village (Pentre Uchaf), which was made up mainly of the older houses and farms, and the new Lower Village (Pentre Isaf), built around the railway station and consisting mostly of shops and workshops. The village became a hub of commerce, as the railways and road network brought traders and customers from across north Wales.
The first ever meeting of the Women's Institute took place in Llanfairpwll in 1915 and the movement (which began in Canada) then spread through the rest of the British Isles.
In popular culture
The Welsh band Super Furry Animals called their debut E.P. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgoger-ychwyndrobwllantysil-iogogogochynygofod (in space).
The song "Red Cave" by Brooklyn-based indie rock band Yeasayer references the English translation of the town name with these lyrics: "Mary's house in the hollow of the white hazel rapid whirlpool at the church of the red cave."
The name was used in the movie Barbarella as the password for the headquarters of Dildano, the comical revolutionary, and by Peter Sellers in the film The Road to Hong Kong where he plays a quack doctor who asks Bob Hope to say it instead of the more usual 'Ahh' when examining his teeth.
The name was used as a solution in a crossword compiled by Roger Squires for The Telford and Wrekin News when royalty visited Ironbridge in 1979 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the first iron bridge, for acceptance by Guinness World Records as the longest word to appear in a published crossword. The clue was “Giggling troll follows Clancy, Larry, Billy and Peggy who howl, wrongly disturbing a place in Wales (58)”, an anagram.[3]
The song "The Boy From..." by Stephen Sondheim and Mary Rodgers features the place name juxtaposed with a similarly long, but fictional, Spanish place name.
See also
- List of long place names
- Longest word in English
- Llanfairpwll F.C., the town's football club
References
- ^ Neighbourhood Statistics
- ^ Melville Richards, 'Place Names', in An Atlas of Anglesey (Anglesey Community Council. Llangefni, 1972). The late Professor Melville was one of Wales' leading authorities on place names.
- ^ "Blog Archive » Guardian 25,102 / Rufus". Fifteensquared. 2010-08-30. Retrieved 2013-05-28.
External links
- Village website, listed in the 2002 Guinness Book of Records as the world's longest valid Internet domain name
- BBC Article at H2G2
- Explanation of village name
- Flickr photos
- photos of Llanfair PG and surrounding area on geograph
- Musical "How To" lesson on the correct pronunciation
