List of Standardised Welsh Place-names
The Welsh Language Commissioner's published its recommendations in June 2018 regarding the standard forms of Welsh place-names. I think it might be useful as a common source for the Slow Ways project going forward, but it is not without issues. Rather than simply post a link in the Resources page, I wanted to flag up a small caveat.
For place names in Welsh, they are obviously to be listened to very seriously. Where I struggle is their designation of the English version of some settlements.
For example - the town of Kidwelly (English). This is how the town is spelt on maps, road atlases, railway timetimes etc, etc. Until recently, this was the normal English spelling. The Welsh Language Commissioner's entry when a search is done for 'Kidwelly' produces Cydweli as both the 'Standard form' and the 'English form'.
The relevance to Slow Ways - a search on the Share tab just now produced 6 hits for Kidwelly, but none for Cydweli. The OS Map's search responds to both, but seems to work on the former being English, the latter being Welsh. Sadly for tourism, the road sign on entering the town now says only Cydweli - so anyone looking in their road map would struggle, but that's a different issue! Travel by rail would also be a problem, as the National Rail Enquiries online booking system does not recognise Cydweli.
Another example: Bala, in Gwynedd, North Wales. This is how most people would know the town, and would search for it in that form in most circumstances. Officially, the town is called Y Bala, and that is correctly given as an 'alternative settlement name' in the Find tab.
The relevance to Slow Ways - A search on Slow Ways for 'Y Bala' locates only the Aternative under the Find tab, not the numerous instances of 'Bala'.
This is not an urgent issue, but it might become an important one (once people are able to travel into Wales again).
For now, here is the link to the List - other Slow Ways volunteers might be able to identify other potential 'trip hazzards' - Kidwelly and Bala were the only two I tried!
List of Standardised Welsh Place-names
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Hi Peter, thanks for sharing this. It's really important to get this right and not just for Wales. We've been using other datasets which have not done this very well so far. There is going to be a job to work through update all of the routes within a large spreadsheet. We can use this list to do that work. Are you aware of a similar dataset for Scotland?
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In respect of Scotland, I don't know of a direct equivalent in terms of look-up database, but the simple list in this Names in Scotland might be a useful starter?
Someone in Scotland will hopefully be able to add something more official. They might also be able to advise whether the same problems arise when defining the 'real' English form.
Peter
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Even the road signs sometimes change spelling from one to the next. These two near Brecon are 300m apart yet disagree with one another regarding the spelling of Llanwern / Llan-y-wern.
The form in the Standardised List is Llan-y-wern only. If you were to search for Llanwern, it would direct you to a different settlement near to Newport.
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it would be best if both the English and Welsh names are used in searching. that way you should avoid any ambiguity problems.
for example, Newport in South Wales is generally referred to as Newport even by people who live there, but it's Welsh name is Casnewydd ( translates as New Castle) - which in the language helps to distinguish it from Newport in Pembrokeshire which is Trefdraeth (translates as Town by the Beach). so a search for Newport should give 2 responses - and if both Wesh names are shown in the result, then the searcher can easily define which is which and choose accordingly.
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Hi Dick. Thanks for this. We've downloaded the right lists and will make sure that both names are used. Really important.
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Good morning Daniel... I wondered if you wanted me/us to do a Find/Replace for towns we are sure of? For example, my home town of St Clears is Sanclêr in Welsh (with accent). I see that Ian Thomas has put both in the clekid route, but without the accent, so easy to do - as long as the worksheet I do it on gets taken forward into next phase.
Would changing the Shared tab do it into the next phase? I assume that you'd want some control over these changes being made, would you need to give temporary permissions to people to change the relevant cells?
I'd be very happy to go through and change ones for my part of Wales if you want?
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Thanks Peter. Jason is leading on names!
Jason Davies what do you think would be best? Maybe when we review the A-Z having a third column of place names?
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Hi,
Thanks for your offer of help Peter, and everyone for all the comments on the thread. At the moment we're reviewing all the settlements and routes to make sure they're (a) all there and (b) link up nicely.
Although ultimately, accuracy and diversity around settlement names is very important, for the purposes of the Buzzards review, priority is being given to (a) have we got all the settlements we need? and (b) is it in the right place?
All the settlements have a "working name" and most should be fine, but ultimately the names will need reviewing themselves for the purposes of accuracy, diversity and whatever other reasons, to enable the website to work well for users.
My gut feeling is it's better to wait for the Buzzards review work to finish, then to look at how we refer to places, as we know what we're working with. All thoughts, criticism, ideas and advice genuinely welcome though.
Jason
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Before any Find/Replace activity....I just did a test which confirmed something I'd wondered. Searching for the correct Welsh language 'version' of St Clears using the Standardised Sanclêr (copied & pasted from the Commissioner's list, as that seemed the best way to avoid introducing error), gave the following result:
"There are no entries matching Sanclêr"
A search for Sancler does pick up clekid, so presumably the accent is affecting the search as it constitutes a different value. I don't know if there is any way of the accents being ignored when searching - over to those who know the software I guess!
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Thanks Jason, no worries!
I was just looking to do something, as I haven't had any task via Buzzards!
"My gut feeling is it's better to wait for the Buzzards review work to finish, then to look at how we refer to places, as we know what we're working with" - does that mean there's been an invitation to do something - I haven't seen anything yet from being in the Buzzard's group?
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Things are going on behind the scenes to get everything ready for the Buzzards review
No invitation yet - you haven't missed anything.
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accents in Welsh are not so important on written names - they are mostly used to define pronounciation so a circumflex on a letter will define it's a long vowel. another example is my birth town of Cwmbran - in Welsh it's Cwmbrân - but the circumflex is hardly ever used in writing, and certainly wasn't when I was growing up there - we just grew up pronouncing it correctly probably not even knowing it had a circumflex on the a!!
so you don't need to use the correct Welsh spelling on Slow Ways unless there are 2 places with the same name that can only be separated by the accent - but I can't honestly think of any like that!
so for any Welsh place name, worry not about any accents in data.
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Hi Richard Donovan ,
I see that you suggest 'not to worry about any accents in data', but it was the data dimension I was drawing attention to, not ordinary usage (for which I agree, life's too short!)
As I said in my post, if you copy/paste a name from many sources into the Slow Ways database, it won't be found if it includes an accent -
"There are no entries matching Sanclêr"
A search for Sancler does pick up clekid, so presumably the accent is affecting the search as it constitutes a different value. I don't know if there is any way of the accents being ignored when searching - over to those who know the software I guess!
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Interesting thread!
I would be very happy to help in providing Welsh place names for settlements that have both English and Welsh names, at least in my local area (SE Wales).
I notice that a few double names are already present in the Buzzards worksheet:
Abergavenny / Y Fenni
Caldicot (Cil-y-coed)
Rhayader / Rhaeadr Gwy
Monmouth / Trefynwy
Newtown / Y Drenewydd...but many others are missing, even for the capital city: Cardiff / Caerdydd!
I think a new data column will be required eventually. Otherwise, there will need to be a formatting convention for adding alternative names in the existing column. We already have inconsistencies: usage of both / and () characters as separators!
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I've just noticed: the place name Monmouth on the current network is showing a Welsh name of Tryfynwy.
That spelling is incorrect - it should be Trefynwy.
Phil
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Hi Phil,
Thank you. I will in with one of my colleagues about how we can update it. I know we're in the process of updating so we might have caught it and it's not correct on the site yet.
Best wishes,
Cristie0
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