Place Name History -BRO MORGANNWG
THE MEANING AND DERIVATION OF PLACE-NAMES
BRO MORGANNWG – VALE OF GLAMORGAN
There are two patterns in English which convey a Welsh place-name such as Bro Morgannwg – namely ‘Vale of Glamorgan’ and ‘Glamorgan Vale’ (cf Ogmore Vale, Ebbw Vale, Merthyr Vale etc). This second pattern is the exact equivalent of the Welsh name though you’ll notice that the English word order differs from that of Welsh. Those of you who speak Welsh or have some knowledge of the language will know also that adjectives follow the noun in Welsh – as they do in Italian, Spanish and French (with some exceptions). English, like German, being a member of the Germanic family of languages, follows a different pattern in that the adjective precedes the noun.
The Welsh word ‘bro’ has no exact equivalent in English and numerous words are used to convey the meaning – depending on the context – words such as ‘land’, ‘area’, ‘district’, ‘locality’, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘native haunt’. In the case of Bro Morgannwg, the word chosen in English is ‘Vale’.
The second part of our place-name is Morgannwg. This consists of two elements – Morgan + wg. The Old Welsh ending ‘-wg’ means ‘territory of’ or ‘land belonging to’. And the person to whom the land belonged was Morgan Mwynfawr – Morgan the Wealthy – who was King of south east Wales in the eighth century. Some scholars maintain that it was after a tenth century king – Morgan Hen – Morgan the Aged – that the area was named. Either way, the name was Morgan! So Bro Morgannwg means something like ‘the district of Morgan’s land’. (Don’t worry about the double ‘n’ – it is merely something that happens to the spelling when the consonant ‘n’ falls under the main accent.)
In the English version, we’ve seen that ‘Vale’ is the equivalent of ‘Bro’ – and this is followed by the seemingly English name Glamorgan. But on further inspection we see that ‘Glamorgan’ is made up of two elements – ‘Gla-‘ and ‘Morgan’. The second element, Morgan, has been explained above. The first element ‘gla-‘ is a contraction of the Welsh word ‘gwlad’ which means ‘land’ or ‘country’. So the name Glamorgan isn’t an English word at all – and I’m sure that has surprised many people! ‘Morgan-wg’ and ‘Gwlad-Morgan’ are two Welsh names which mean exactly the same thing – ‘Morgan’s land’.
Next month – Y Barri, Cold Knap and Colcot.
Ann M. Jones