Welsh Place Names Trivia Quiz

Answer: Caerdydd

The word "Caer" means fort or stronghold - Cardiff was, and still is, the stronghold on the river "dydd", or "didi" - or "Taff" as it was Anglicized to.

"Llandaff" is the cathedral on the Taff - now a suburb of Cardiff, "Tretaf" would be Tafftown (if it existed) and Cardigan is a town in Mid Wales - as well as being an item of clothing!

Answer: Abertawe

"Aber" is the mouth of the river, and the "Tawe" is the river that flows through Wales' second city.

"Treralarch" would be the town of the swan, and alarch mor would be a literal translation of "Swan-sea". Swindon is a town some 150 miles East of Swansea in Wiltshire, England, and just sounds a bit like Swansea - the "English" version of the name probably came from Norse settlers there - "Sweyn" being another version of the Norse name "Sven", and "sey" meaning inlet.

Answer: Carmarthen

Some confusion exists regarding the exact origins of the word "Caerfyrddin" - some say it came from the Roman name for the town, Maridinum (thus, the "fort of Maridinum) whilst others say it came from the wizard Merlin (Myrddin in Welsh), who myth and legend associate with the town.

Merthyr Tydfil yn Welsh is Merthyr Tudful (so just a couple of vowel changes needed to make yourself bilingual in Merthyr), Beaufort is in Gwent, and Fordcastle I simply made up as a plausible, though completely fictitious, translation.

Answer: Tenby

Tenby (in Pembrokeshire, south west Wales) and Denbigh, on the north Wales coast, come from precisely the same origins - "Din", short for "Dinas", which these days means "City", but in older times, meant fort or stronghold, and "bych" which is the same as the modern "bach", which means "small".

The "y pysgod" (the fishes) part was added onto the west Walian "Dinbych" to stress the importance of fishing to the small port - and you can still buy fish fresh off the fishing boats around the old harbour in Tenby to this day.

Answer: Neath

Very simple explanation for the Welsh name here - "Castell" means castle, and the Nedd is the river that runs through Neath - so "Castellnedd".

Answer: Wrexham

Wrexham is one of the minority of places in Wales whose name has an Anglo Saxon origin, rather than a Welsh one. The name derives from "Hamm", the Old English word for watermeadow, and possibly from the personal name "Wryghtel" (though no one is really sure who this individual was), or from a "Castle Wristleham", from records believed to date back to the 5th century AD.

In a turnaround to the way most place names in Wales are "Anglicized", Wrexham would appear to have been "Welshified" therefore to "Wrecsam" in later years.

Answer: Y Drenewydd

One of the few place names in Wales that really is a literal translation from one language to another - "New" is "Newydd", and "Town" is "Tref" - mutated to "Dref". It really was a "new" "town" once - in the 13th Century, when Edward I commissioned Roger de Montgomerie to build a stronghold in what was seen as an important military location in the middle of Wales, near a ford on the River Severn.

Answer: Y Felinheli

Y Felinheli is a gorgeous little village on the foothills of Snowdonia, in between Bangor and Caernarfon. For a while, it became known as Port Dinorwig, in the heyday of the flint industry in north Wales, but it's now known almost exclusively by its original, Welsh name. "Melin" is mill, and "Heli" is the stream that powered the mill.

Aberystwyth is in mid Wales, Llancaiach Fawr is in southeast Wales, and Llanelli is in southwest Wales.

Answer: Bae Colwyn

The river Colwyn is in north Wales, but doesn't run anywhere near Colwyn Bay - so it must have been another Colwyn altogether who gave his name to the lovely seaside town of Colwyn Bay, who boast Monty Python's Terry Jones and erstwhile 007 actor Timothy Dalton amongst its famous former inhabitants.

Answer: Welshpool

"Trallwng" means, in Old Welsh, a "dirty pool". Hence, when it was Anglicized in the Middle Ages, it became known as Pool - in 1835, the prefix "Welsh" was added to it, to distinguish it from the "Poole" in Dorset, England.