Why do Welsh place names appear around the world?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From The BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

Why do Welsh place names appear around the world?

Why does Swansea pop up on the map several times in the USA and Australia? How did magnificent Milford Sound in New Zealand come to bear the name of Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire? And what is the story behind Llandudno in Cape Town, South Africa?

The answer, according to Swansea University's Gethin Matthews, is fairly complicated but relates to how Welsh skills in heavy industries were highly sought after.

"It's all about economics - Irish emigration was much more about desperation, while Welsh emigration was driven by aspiration," he said.

Looking wider ... to the rest of the area we cover,

Wikipedia -

"Taunton is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States.

Taunton was founded by settlers from England and officially incorporated as a town on September 3, 1639. Most of the town's settlers were originally from Taunton in Somerset, England, which led early settlers to name the settlement after that town. At the time of Taunton's incorporation, they explained their choice of name as being “in honor and love to our dear native country"

Oxford is a city in, and the county seat of, Lafayette County, Mississippi, United States. Founded in 1837, it was named after the British university city of Oxford in hopes of having the state university located there, which it did successfully attract.

Truro is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, comprising two villages: Truro and North Truro. Located slightly more than 100 miles (160 km) by road from Boston, it is a summer vacation community just south of the northern tip of Cape Cod, in an area known as the "Outer Cape". English colonists named it after Truro in Cornwall, United Kingdom.

Truro was settled by English immigrant colonists in the 1690s as the northernmost portion of the town of Eastham. The town was officially separated and incorporated in 1709.

The lack of a "Melksham" elsewhere in the world - away from Wilthshire - has oft surprised me; whether its because a contented lot lived hereabouts and there was little emigration, or because transport wasn't good (  ), I don't know.  There is a "Melksham" surname in Australia, and indeed a number of connections there.

What about your town??

[Robin Summerhill]

I have actually been to the Llandudno on the Cape Peninsula, Cape Town. It is litle more than a small isolated suburb on the Atlantic coast, and topographically the complete opposite of the one in North Wales. The South African one is right on the coast and connected to the main Cape Town to Hout Bay road which is at a much higher level.

I suspect that the majority of these names simply stem from the fact that immigrants many years ago named them after either their home town/ village or somewhere that was important to them. Other places in Cape Town and Cape Province named after UK^▸ (United Kingdom) places include:

Malmesbury
Worcester
Plumstead
Kenilworth
Woodstock
Somerset West
Clifton
Ottery
Atholl

And in Johannesburg there is a Bryanston, where the woman who would be my mother in law if I had the common decency to marry her daughter, lives... There is also a Buccleuch not far away and also a Kempton Park

But back to LLandudno, when in South Africa don't try to use the Welsh pronunciation, because you will get many an odd look, as I have found to my cost... 

[johnneyw]

Inhabitants of Brittany may also note how many places in Cornwall and Wales have Breton sounding names.

[Robin Summerhill]

Inhabitants of Brittany may also note how many places in Cornwall and Wales have Breton sounding names.

That will probably have more to do with sharing a common language, or having languages that have the same "root" language.

An example of that (and as we were mentioning South Africa on this thread) there is a word "kloof" in Afrikaans which means "steep sided valley." There is a Lancashire dialect word "Clough" which means exactly the same thing.

[ellendune]

Inhabitants of Brittany may also note how many places in Cornwall and Wales have Breton sounding names.

That will probably have more to do with sharing a common language, or having languages that have the same "root" language.

An example of that (and as we were mentioning South Africa on this thread) there is a word "kloof" in Afrikaans which means "steep sided valley." There is a Lancashire dialect word "Clough" which means exactly the same thing.

Bretton Cornish and Welsh languages are very similar

[patch38]

As Eddie Izzard said of the Pilgrim Fathers, "They set off from Plymouth and landed in Plymouth. How lucky is that?"

[Bmblbzzz]

There are something like 35 places called Bristol around the world, mostly in North America but also Australia and even a small village in Peru. What's most surprising though is that in many places around the world, the grandest hotel in town is called the Bristol.

Non-locally there's the fairly well known but tiny hamlet of Moscow near Kilmarnock, but I don't think it was named by Russian settlers!

[stuving]

Non-locally there's the fairly well known but tiny hamlet of Moscow near Kilmarnock, but I don't think it was named by Russian settlers!

Moscow, or Little Moscow, appears all over the place, often explained as the site of a camp for Russian (or often Polish) soldiers who ended up in Britain after the war awaiting politicians to decide their fate. In many cases that was being sent "home" where Stalin treated them as traitors, of course.

[Robin Summerhill]

Non-locally there's the fairly well known but tiny hamlet of Moscow near Kilmarnock, but I don't think it was named by Russian settlers!

Given the feudal system that was in place under the Tsars, the Communist system in place post-1917, and the religious tolerance issues that have been rumbling on for centuries in many ocuntries and between many faiths, I wouldn't be 100% sure about that...

[Bmblbzzz]

Fair point. Wikipedia says:

The name is thought to be a corruption of "Moss-hall" or "Moss-haw" but its spelling was amended in 1812 to mark Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.[citation needed] The name may also be of Brittonic origin, and derived from the words maɣes, "field" and coll, "hazel" (Welsh maes-coll).[1] A stream called the Volga Burn flows through the village.[citation needed] Locally the land and forest around Cowans Law to the north-west is referred to as 'Little Russia'. The hamlet also shares the same latitude (55° North) as the Russian city.

If the Volga Burn is correct – and it does appear on Google maps of the area (but where do they get their names from?) – that would suggest more than coincidence, though of course it's possible the stream was named later in reference to the village, which originated as "Moss-hall". Of course Moscow in Russia is not on the Volga, which Russians would know but locals not necessarily.