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Industrial activity has left its mark on place names in Wales, as in many other countries. We can learn a great deal about the history of people and what they used to do by looking at the names of villages and towns. Many names describe the kind of industry, for example porthladd (port), melin (mill), gefail y gof (smithy), pandy (fulling mill) and ffwrnais/ furnace.

Industrial activity

Porthmadog is named after Mr Maddocks who established the port, and Port Dinorwic refers to the quarry that used the port to export its slates. Y Felinheli - melin (mill) and heli (seawater, brine) - is another name for Port Dinorwic. This takes us back to an older industrial tradition when tidal power was used to turn a water-wheel, as opposed to more common mills on the banks of streams.

The village of Ffwrnais/ Furnace between Aberystwyth and Machynlleth reminds us of the time when iron was smelted there, and Tonyrefail and Tonypandy, both in Glamorgan, remind us of the work of the blacksmith and textile workers. The Welsh element ton refers to unploughed land.

Other names refer to extracting minerals from the earth. The element mwyn (mineral) itself can be seen in Pant-y-mwyn and Rhyd-y-mwyn in the old lead mining areas of Flintshire, Mwynglawdd (Minera) near Wrexham, and perhaps Rhandir-mwyn in Carmarthenshire.

The name Rasau in Blaenau Gwent comes from the English word race - a reference to the water channels used to wash minerals after excavation.

The element glo and the English equivalent coal occurs, as can be expected, in places such as Nant-y-glo or Coalbrookdale, but care must be taken to ensure that the mineral is the word referred to, as in the old days coal also meant coke or charcoal. There was never coal in Cwm-y-glo near Caernarfon, for example, but it is possible that people made charcoal from the local trees there at some time.

Names taken from landowners and works owners

A number of new villages and towns were established in Wales following the Industrial Revolution, especially in the south-eastern valleys. New names were required for all these places, and one of the easiest ways to name a place was to use the names of the people who established it, or that of the landowners or the owners of the nearby works.

Welsh place names (with the element tref as a prefix to the individual's name) and the English names (with the element town as a suffix) were formed according to this pattern, often in the same area. Butetown, Hopkinstown, Williamstown, Treharris and Trealaw all occur in Glamorgan.

It was an opportunity for some to be immortalised: John Bury sold land to be developed near Rhosllannerchrugog, on the condition that it would be named Johnstown in his honour!

In some cases, these new names replaced earlier names, as in the case of Tylorstown in the Rhondda. The town was named after Alfred Taylor, who established the first colliery there, but the old Welsh name, Pendyrus, was retained in the name of the farm where the first pit was opened, and in the name of the local choir.

Trefor in Gwynedd was named after Trevor Jones, an important figure in the local granite quarry in the middle of the 19th century. Yr Hendre was the previous place name.

With the passage of time, the meaning of some names are forgotten, and the names are misinterpreted. Josiah Catherall opened the Argoed Colliery, near Mold, 150 years ago. This became known as Pentre Catherall, but over time, Mr Catherall was forgotten. The place became known as Pentre'r Cythrel, and then Pentre'r Gŵr Drwg which literally mean 'Devil's Village'. On the whole, place names are a good guide to the agricultural and industrial history of different neighbourhoods.

Tourism and place names

The growth of the railways and the tourism industry have also left their mark on Welsh place names. It became customary to add 'Bay' and the Welsh translation 'Bae' to denote a seaside town which hoped to attract visitors. (Colwyn Bay and Bae Colwyn) or 'on sea' to emphasize that they were at the seaside, such as Rhos-on-Sea.

In the same way, Wells was added to the names of towns that were trying to attract people to enjoy the healing waters found there, as in Llandrindod Wells, Llangamarch Wells and Llanwrtyd Wells, following the pattern of towns such as Royal Tunbridge Wells in England.

Agricultural activity

Agricultural activity has left its mark on the land and also the place names of Wales. Old agricultural names include maerdref (mayor's farm), maerdy (mayor's house), maenol (the manor) and the maenor (the grange). They take us back to a time when serfs, or villeins, worked the land to provide food for the king and his court. The officer in charge of the serfs was called the 'maer biswail', and this is the maer which occurs in these names.

tref meant 'farm' rather than today's meaning of a settlement larger than a village, so the maerdref was the 'mayor's farm'. maerdy was the house where the mayor lived, and it must have been significantly grander than the dwellings of the serfs. Maerdy in the Rhondda is an example of a village which has retained this name. The faenol in north Wales or the maenor in south Wales was a group of serf farms. This name can still be seen in the Faenol Estate between Caernarfon and Bangor, and in y Faenor near Merthyr Tydfil.

The elements hendref and hafod also remind us about an old way of farming. The hendref was the family's permanent home where they would spend the winter, but during the summer the animals would be moved to highland pastures, or the hafod, to release the best land for growing crops. With the demand for more farming land as the population grew, the hafod buildings developed into a farm where people lived all year.

There are many farms today called Hendref and Hafod as a single element or with another element such as the family name (Hendreforgan near Gilfach Goch) or with other elements such as tŷ (house) in Hafoty. Sometimes further description was needed to differentiate them from each other, such as Hendre Fychan and Hendre Eirian which are farms near Harlech.

lluest (a shepherd's summer dwelling), bugeildy (shepherd's house), ffridd (a mountain pasture for sheep), corlan, ffald and lloc (places for keeping sheep) all remind us how important sheep farming was in the past, and they still occur in many place names. Bugeildy was the original form of Beguildy in Radnorshire, and there is still a village called Lloc near Holywell.

There are other names connected with keeping cattle and pigs, such as the beudy (byre) in Llanboidy in Pembrokeshire and Landshipping in the same county, from long shippen, which is a long byre.

There are at least two places in Wales called Mochdre, one near Colwyn Bay and the other near Newtown, which suggests that they were once pig farms. However, one should not assume that the moch element in place names always refers to animals, because moch also means fast flowing water in early Welsh. It is likely that this is the meaning of moch in names such as Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant.