Place Names - Ian Kendall
A
Aber - is one of the most frequently used elements in Welsh place names. It usually occurs at the beginning of a name but can also be found, on occasion, at the end, e.g., Glanaber or Llanaber. ‘Aber’ is a geographical term meaning the confluence of one body of water (normally a river or stream) with another (a larger river, a lake or the sea). In Wales, the word is applied very commonly to river estuaries, which explains why most ‘Aber’ place names are on the coast. The second element in ‘Aber’ place names is typically the name of the river itself, e.g. Aberystwyth means ‘estuary of the river Ystwyth’. Less commonly, the word is applied to the meeting of two rivers inland, e.g., Aberdare, Glamorganshire, which is located at the point where the river Dâr enters the river Cynon. Lower down the valley, the town of Abercynon stands at the point where the river Cynon, in turn, enters the river Taff. Places beginning with ‘Aber’ also occur in parts of Scotland, and have the same meaning as in Wales; the origin of these names is mainly Pictish, an extinct language now believed to have been closely related to Old Welsh. The Gaelic equivalent of Aber is inbhear (anglicized as ‘Inver’) and is clearly derived from the same Old Celtic root. Being a frequently used element in Welsh place names, it is not surprising that several ‘Aber’ place names have found their way to Australia.
Afon - is also a common element in Welsh place names, where it simply means ‘river’. It has been anglicized as Avon, which accounts for the large number of rivers in England and Scotland that bear this name (the Gaelic equivalent is abhainn, pronounced more or less as in Welsh). In Wales the only river bearing this name is a minor river in Glamorgan (the river Afan in Welsh), at the estuary of which is a place called Aberavon, now a suburb of Port Talbot. Australian references to Avon (as rivers or as places, e.g., Avondale) do not have a direct link with Wales. The Avon river near St Arnaud in western Victoria, for instance, was named for the English river on which Stratford-on-Avon is situated, while the Avon river in Gippsland, Victoria was supposedly named for one of the Scottish rivers (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2006:12), though it is interesting to note that the small town of Stratford is located on this particular river.
PLACE NAMES WITH A DEFINITE WELSH CONNECTION
Aberdare - a town in the Hunter Valley, NSW, now considered a suburb of Cessnock. Named after the area of Wales from which the Very Rev. Rabbi Morris came from to Newcastle in 1903 (Hunter Valley Place Names and their Meanings, Newcastle City Council Library website) – see also Abermain below. Aberdare in Wales is in Cynon Valley, in the South Wales coalfields.
Aberdare - a parish in Mareeba Shire, on the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland
Abergavenny - an historic parish, proclaimed in 1836, in the former County of Cumberland, Tasmania (nowtheCumberlandLandDistrict). Abergavenny (Y Fenni in Modern Welsh) is a large town in NW Monmouthshire.
B
(Updated 21 January 2016)
Bangor - a neighbourhood of Menai, a southern suburb of Sydney, NSW. “Owen Jones selected his farm in 1895 and called it Bangor after his birthplace in Wales. To overcome duplication of that name in NSW Bangor was changed to Menai in 1910. The original Menai was a township opposite Bangor on the Menai Straits in Wales. P 67 ;’Two Hundred Years in Retrospect’.” (Geographical Names Board of NSW). When the suburb of Menai expanded, the eastern section was renamed Bangor in 1976.
Bangor – a village north of Launceston, Tasmania. “The gift of 117 acres of land between Lilydale and Bangor by Lord Methyr [sic] of Hean Castle, Pembrokeshire, Wales is unique in Tasmania. Over 20 different kinds of wild orchids have been found growing in what is now known as 'Merthyr Park'.” Lilydale Online Access Centre
Bartle Frere - a locality in Cairns Regional, Queensland. “Named and bounded by the Minister for Natural Resources 23 February 2001. Boundaries amended by the Minister for Natural Resources and Minister for Mines 28 February 2003. Derived from Mount Bartle Frere, named by George Elphinstone Dalrymple (1826-1876), 30 September 1873, after Sir Henry Bartle Frere (1815- ), President of the Royal Geographical Society (London).”(Queensland Government, Dept. of Environment and Resource Management). Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere (1815-1884), colonial administrator, was born at Clydach in Brecknock, South Wales.
Bartle Frere - a parish in Tablelands Regional, Queensland. “Derived from Mount Bartle Frere, which was named by George Elphinstone Dalrymple (1826-1876) explorer, public servant and politician, 30 September 1873, after Sir Henry Bartle Frere (1815- ), President of the Royal Geographical Society, London.” (Queensland Government, Dept. of Environment and Resource Management).
Beaumaris - a southern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. “In 1845 James Moysey leased grazing land in the area and shortly afterwards purchased 32 hectares. He named his property Beaumaris Park, which derives from the Welsh coastal resort where Edward I built the Beau Marais Castle. (The reason for Moysey's choice is unclear as he came from Devon.)”. (Monash University, Australian Places). Beaumaris is a French name meaning ‘beautiful marsh’. Beaumaris Castle on the Isle of Anglesey is listed as a World Heritage Site with UNESCO.
Beaumaris – a village south of St Helens, Tasmania.
Beaumaris Bay – the bay of which Beaumaris, Victoria (see above) is situated.
Brecknock - a parish in Boulia Shire, Queensland. Brecknock was the name of a former Welsh county, the name being an Anglicization of Brycheiniog, ‘the territory of Brychan’. Brychan was a 5th century Welsh prince.
Brecknock Harbour - a natural harbour in Kunmunya Aboriginal Reserve, WA.
Brecknock Island - an island at the entrance to Brecknock Harbour, Kunmunya Aboriginal Reserve, WA.
Brecon - a small rural settlement about 15km south of Keith, SA. “Probably named after Brecon in Wales.” (Praite & Tolley, 1970: 15).
Brecon - a rural locality east of Mount Breckin in the Dungog area of Hunter Valley, NSW.
Bringelly - a western suburb of Sydney, NSW. Named “after an estate in Wales owned by Judge-Advocate Ellis Bent, the first practising barrister-at-law to reach the colony (in 1809)”. (Reed, 1973). If indeed the origin of the name is Welsh (there is speculation that it could be Aboriginal, e.g. Kennedy & Kennedy, 2006: 40), then a likely meaning could be ‘hill of the monastic cells’ or ‘grove-hill’. It should perhaps be noted that Ellis Bent was English, not Welsh. There is a Bryngelli Estate in Hirwaun, in the Rhondda Valley, while the name, being descriptive, also occurs as a street name in Wales.
Bringelly - a parish in Cumberland County, City of Penrith, NSW – see Bringelly above.
Bryn - the Welsh word for a mound, mount or hill, occurs widely in place names in Wales. Somewhat surprisingly therefore, it is rarely encountered in Australia apart from a few street names, e.g. Bryn Mawr (‘big hill’) and Penn-y-Bryn (‘hilltop’) and the names of residences, e.g., Bryn Glas (‘green-blue hill’) in Maitland, NSW and Brynhyfryd (‘mount pleasant’) in Ipswich, Queensland, both of which were mansions built by Welsh coal mining magnates. Brynhyfryd is located in the Ipswich suburb of Blackstone, which was once described as a Welsh suburb. Two of the mines in the area were called Aberdare and Rhondda while Lewis Thomas, “the patron of Blackstone”, completed his three-storeyed mansion, Brynhyfryd, in 1890. There is however a small village in the Otways, Victoria, called Tanybryn. Believed by some researchers to be an Aboriginal name, this is highly unlikely since tan-y-bryn in Welsh means ‘under the hill’.
Brynderwin - a parish in Blackall Shire, Queensland. The name is a corruption of Welsh words suggesting the meaning ‘Oak Hill”.
Names with No Welsh Connection
Barry – a village about 30km south west of Bathurst, NSW. “In 1890 the village changed its name to Barry - probably in honour of a Caleb Barry who was the former bank manager of nearby Blayney and a vigorous member of the Church of England in that town.” (Wikipedia article on Barry, New South Wales, March 2007).
Barry Beach - a beach on Phillip Island, Victoria. Named after W. Baragwanath, a director of the Geological Survey (Phillip Island Historical Society) – cited by Eric Bird, Place Names on the Coast of Victoria. William Baragwanath (1878-1966), Australian surveyor, geologist and public servant, was born at Durham Lead near Ballarat, Victoria, son of William Baragwanath, Cornish-born surveyor, and his wife Margaret Hunter, née Herberton, of Glasgow.
Barry Point - a cape in South Gippsland, Victoria. Named after a Director of the Geological Survey, W. Baragwanath, whose family (including John Baragwanath) had land here (Blake 1977; J. Whelan, Parks Victoria) – cited by Eric Bird, Place Names on the Coast of Victoria.
C
In Wales many places begin with the letter C, or have a C-name embedded in the full name. Among the most common of these are cae ( = field), caer ( = fortress), cam ( = crooked), carn ( = cairn), cefn ( = mountain ridge), celli ( = copse), ceu ( = hollow), coed ( = forest or wood), croes ( = cross, crossroads) and cwm ( = bowl shaped valley, or corrie, from which the English term combe is said to be derived). Only two of these frequently used names (Caer, or Car, its Anglicized form) and Coed seem to be represented in place names in Australia.
Caer, Car - The best known examples in Wales are Caernarvon (‘fort in Arfon’ – Arfon meaning ‘opposite Mon’, i.e. Anglesey), Caerleon (‘fort of the [Roman] legion’), Caerphilly (fort of Ffili’) and Caerwent (‘the fort of Gwent’ – Gwent being an old Welsh kingdom corresponding broadly with Monmouthshire). The ‘car’ in Cardiff (‘fort on the river Taff’) and Carmarthen (‘fort at the [Roman] fort by the sea’) represent Anglicized forms of the term; the ‘car’ in Cardigan, on the other hand, has no reference to a fort. Cardigan is the Anglicization of Ceredigion (‘land of Ceredig’). Carlisle in Cumbria and Carluke in Lanarkshire are two well-known examples of places bearing essentially Welsh names from the days when the Brythonic form of Celtic was still spoken in northern England and southern Scotland. Caerlaverock Castle near Dumfries, on the Scottish side of the Solway Firth, even preserves the Welsh spelling. The Welsh names for several cities outside Wales feature the element ‘caer’: examples are Caer (Chester), Caeredin (Edinburgh), Caerefrog (York), Caergaint (Canterbury), Caergrawnt (Cambridge), Caerloyw (Gloucester) and Caersallog (Salisbury). The Cornish equivalent is ‘cair’ or ‘ker’ while the equivalent in Irish is ‘cahir’ (sometimes Anglicized to ‘caher’) and which was probably borrowed from Old Welsh.
Coed - meaning a wood or forest, examples in Wales include Coed Talon in Flintshire, Coed-y-paen in Monmouthshire, Coedpoeth west of Wrexham and Betws-y-Coed (‘prayer-house in the wood’) in the Gwydyr Forest south of Conwy. It also appears in mutated form, e.g. Hengoed (‘old wood’) in Shropshire or semi-anglicized form, e.g. Pencoyd (‘woodend’) in Herefordshire, while many place names in England and Scotland contain disguised forms of coed, examples being Cheetwood and Penketh in Lancashire, Chatham in Kent and Dalkeith and Bathgate, both near Edinburgh. Two Australian examples are the Queensland parish of Penecoed and Pennycoed Creek near Longreach, Queensland.
Cadell - a parish in Urana County, Jerilderie Shire, in the Riverina region of NSW.
Caergwrle - a small village in the Lower Hunter Valley, NSW. This is one of several places in the Hunter Valley that were founded by Welsh settlers from north-east Wales. Like many place names in Flintshire, Caergwrle is a Welsh assimilation of a medieval English name (Corley, meaning ‘clearing in the wood where cranes are found’). Only the caer element is actually Welsh, with gwrle being a Welsh adaptation of Corley.
Caerleon - a locality about 3km NW of Mudgee, Mid-Western Regional Council, NSW. Caerleon in south Wales was so named because the Roman Second Legion had its base there. In the eastern suburbs of Sydney a Federation Queen Anne style house called Caerleon was built for Charles B. Fairfax in 1885. Located at 15 Ginahgulla Road, Bellevue Hill, the property was sold for $22 million in January, 2008.
Caernarvon Hills – a range of hills north of Williams, WA. The spelling strongly suggests that the hills were named for the town or county of Caernarvon (Welsh Caernarfon) in north Wales.
Caerphilly - a parish in Charters Towers Regional, Queensland. This is one of several Queensland parishes that were given Welsh names, Caerphilly being a town north of Cardiff famous for its cheese and leaning tower.
Cambria Creek - a creek in Kolan Shire, Queensland. Cambria, of course, is a Latinized version of Cymru, analogous to Anglia, Caledonia and Hibernia.
Cambrian Hill – an outlying southern suburb of Ballarat, Victoria. The name presumably stems from gold-mining days (1850s) when many Welshmen sought their fortunes in Australia.
Cape Conway - a cape, SE of Proserpine, Queensland. The cape was named during the voyage of The Endeavour in 1770 for Henry Seymour Conway (1721-1795) soldier and politician, Secretary of State for the Southern Department 1765-66 and Secretary of State for the Northern Department 1766-68. Although the Conways were an English family, their title had been taken from Conway Castle, in north Wales. The following localities all take their name from Cape Conway: Conway National Park (a national park, 900 km NW of Brisbane, in the Mackay/Proserpine region, established in 1938); Conway Beach (a beach and locality in Whitsunday Regional Council, Queensland; Conway Creek (a creek in the Whitsundays area); Conway Range (a mountain range in Whitsunday Shire) and Conway Shoal (a shoal in the Whitsundays).
Cape Griffith - a cape on the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. The cape was probably named after Samuel Walker Griffith (1845-1920), Premier of Queensland 1883-88 and 1890-93. Samuel Walker Griffith was born at Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan.
Cardiff, Cardiff Heights and Cardiff South - suburbs of Lake Macquarie, Greater Newcastle, NSW. Known originally as Winding Creek, then Lymington but confusion with Flemington resulted. The name Cardiff was adopted in 1889 at the suggestion of James Edwards, a Welsh settler (The Encyclopaedia of Australia, New Zealand and Papua-New Guinea, p. 222).
Cardiff Point - a point on Lake Macquarie, in the suburb of Valentine, Lake Macquarie, Greater Newcastle, NSW.
Cardiff - a parish in Balonne Shire, Queensland.
Cardigan Point - a point near Rockhampton, in the Capricornia region of Queensland. Reportedly named after James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), the Crimean War general who led the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava 25 October 1854. The title, first bestowed in 1661, was presumably taken from the market town of Cardigan in west Wales.
Cardigan and Cardigan Village - outlying western suburbs of Ballarat, Victoria. Though no evidence has as yet been found for the origin of the name, the fact that two other Ballarat suburbs (Sebastopol and Redan) have clear associations with the Crimean War suggests Lord Cardigan rather than the town in Wales.
Cardigan Creek - a creek south of Townsville, in the Charters Tower region of Queensland. The Queensland parish of Cardigan is also located in this area.
Carmarthen - a parish in Diamantina Shire, west of Beulia, Queensland. This is one of several Queensland parishes that were given a Welsh name. Carmarthen in Wales is a market town which, prior to the industrial revolution, was one of the largest towns in Wales, though its population was then barely 4,000.
Carnarvon – a town on the west coast of WA. The town, which was proclaimed in 1883, was named after Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1866 to 1874. (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2006:57). Henry Howard Molyneux, the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, served as High Steward, Univ. of Oxford, Constable of Caernarvon Castle; Secretary of State for the Colonies 1866-1867 and from 1874 to 1878, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1885-86.
Carnarvon – a county on Kangaroo Island, SA, proclaimed in 1874. Like the town in WA, this county was named after the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary (Praite & Tolley, 1970:30).
Carnarvon Range, Carnarvon Gorge and Carnarvon Creek – a mountain range, ravine and creek in the Carnarvon National Park in central Queensland, near Rolleston, reportedly named by Thomas Mitchell, explorer, either after the town in Wales or, more probably, the 3rd Earl of Carnarvon, London-born Henry John George Herbert (1800-1849), traveler, author and father of the 4th Earl. The title Carnarvon is an obvious reference to the town in Wales.
There are several other places in Australia called Carnarvon, but evidence of the precise reason for these names has not yet been found:
Carnarvon - a locality on the Gulf of Carpentaria in NW Queensland.
Carnarvon - a county in Waggamba Shire, SW of Toowoomba, Queensland.
Carnarvon Range – a remote mountain range in Western Australia, about 160km from Wiluna.
Chepstowe - a village about 25km west of Ballarat, Victoria, established about 1850. The Welsh town of Chepstow is located on the river Wye in eastern Monmouthshire; its name is derived from Old English words meaning ‘market place’, its Welsh name being Cas-Gwent - ‘castle in Gwent’ (Ayto & Crofton, 2005:229).
Clwydd and Vale of Clwydd - outlying suburbs of Lithgow, NSW. These names refer to the Vale of Clwyd in north Wales, in which the market town of Denbigh is situated. The name was given to the valley now known as Hartley Vale by Governor Macquarie in 1815 because of its resemblance to the Vale of Clwyd in Wales (The Encyclopaedia of Australia, New Zealand and Papua-New Guinea, p. 1041). The local parish is also called Clwydd.
Collie Cardiff – a small town situated in the only coalfields in WA, south of Perth. The town was founded in 1907 under the name Collie Burn Township, and became known officially as Collie-Cardiff in 1916, the hyphen being dropped in 1944. (www.landgate.wa.gov.au) Cardiff was a popular name for mining towns around the world (a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, and a village in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, being two of many, mainly American examples). Cardiff, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was the largest coal-exporting harbour in the world.
Places with names that could prove, on further investigation, to have a Welsh connection include:
Cambra - a village SE of Dungog, in Dungog Shire, Lower Hunter Valley, NSW. Considering its location in an area that has many Welsh names, this could be a corruption of Cambria.
Cape Richards - the northernmost cape on Hinchinbrook Island, Queensland. Richards, however, is also a common English and Cornish family name.
Cape Thomas - the cape at the northern end of Guichen Bay, SA, north of Robe, though Thomas is also a common English and Irish surname.
Conway Creek (a creek in Blackall Shire, Queensland) and Conway Island (an island in Buccaneer Archipelago, WA). According to the Dictionary of American Family Names, the town of Conway (Welsh Conwy) in north Wales is but one of several origins of the family name. In many instances, Conway is likely to be the Anglicized form of Irish names such as Mac Conmidhe, Ó Connmhaigh or Mac Connmhaigh.
Cymbric Vale - a mining community in the outback, about 120km NE of Broken Hill, NSW. This could be another reference to Cambria or Cymru, perhaps?
Welsh-looking place names with no Welsh connection include Capel (a village south of Bunbury, WA, named after a Miss Capel Carter); Cradoc (a village NW of Cygnet, Tasmania, named after a senior captain serving under Captain Huon de Kermadec sailing the French ship L’Esperance in search of La Perouse – the names of both men look distinctly Breton); and Cradock (a village south of Hawker in the Flinders Ranges National Park, SA, possibly named for Dublin-born Sir John Cradock, a general in the Peninsula War.