From the outset, the Society and its Conservancy project were intended to work within public associations and organisations. Natural Resources Wales (NRW) asked us to add to their database of landscape names the minor local names they wished to see included in the maps used by their day-to-day employees. River pool names are one example.
Our close links with NRW led to a pilot with them and Esri. Since 2022 the care of our map is in the hands of Gwe Cambrian and Esri.
Our use of the historical maps is by agreement with the National Library of Scotland, which was facilitated by the National Library of Wales.
Two maps will be visible to the public, namely
- The Welsh Place-Name Society with names we have checked, and
- A map in the form of a Recording App, which allows the public to contribute minor names on it. These will be checked by the Society, accepting those that containing the necessary details in the relevant data boxes. This is to follow.
1 Welsh Place-Name Society Map
A few thousand minor local names were collected and recorded in public workshops and we were given valuable paper maps and oral evidence. We also received permission from a number of authors and researchers to include their data and examples. Each name appears as a circle on the map.
When clicking on the circle, additional details appear in a box from our database.
Many of these names have not been recorded before. When possible, we also record some of the early examples of the names appearing in estate documents and manuscripts and include references to these sources. This will be a valuable resource for researchers and historians alike. We record the name of the parish as it was in the Tithe Survey of 1840 as it will be helpful to those who wish to trace names. For the same reason, we use the old county names from before 1974.
We hope the map will inspire people to come up with more local names for us.
2 Recording Map
This is to follow.