Quote:
Originally posted by Mair:
And John - do you know why the Welsh is S Tathan and the English is St Athan? It's all perfectly correct!
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Ok it may well be perfectly correct BUT...
Mair No I do not know and I have wondered ever since I saw that entrance many moons ago,so prompted by your question I have googled, starting with "Saint Wales" where I found:-
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/GLA...laceNames.html
this covered the county of Glamorgan but I was unsure which county St Athan is in only that it is near Cardiff.I then found that
"The city of Cardiff is the county town of Glamorgan, although this role has diminished since council reorganisation in 1974 paired Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan together as the new county of South Glamorgan."
I then realised that all along
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/GLA...laceNames.html
shows a convenient list of Glamorgan place names in both straight English and your triple Welsh and I noted:-
Sain Dunwyd St. Donat's St. Donats
Sain Ffagan St. Fagans St. Fagans
Sain Nicolas St. Nicholas Llanmaes
Sain Siorys St. George-super-Ely
St. George Super Ely
AND FINALLY
Sain Tathan St. Athan St. Athan
where the end names were in fact hyperlinks. The St Athan link then took me to
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/GLA/StAthan/
where I was most interested to read
"
St Athan
"ATHAN, ST., in the Cwmwd of Maenor Glynn Ogwr, Cantref of Cron Nedd (now called the Hundred of Ogmore), County of GLAMORGAN, South Wales: a Rectory, valued in the King's Books at £15..9..7: Patron, Robert Jones, Esq.: Church dedicated to
St. Athanasius. The Resident Population of this Parish, in 1801, was 264. The Money raised by the Parish Rates, in 1803, was £125..17..1, at 1s..8d. in the pound. It is 6 1/2 m. S. from Cowbridge. This Parish contains 1300 Acres of cultivated Land. In this Parish are the ruins of East Orchard, one of the twelve Norman Castles, and the Site of West Orchard, another Castle of later date: As well as the Port of West Aber Ddaw, so much noted for the superiority of its Lime. "
From: A Topographical Dictionary of The Dominion of Wales by Nicholas Carlisle, London, 1811."
So yes as I suspected all these years as the Welsh for saint does not end in a "t"
then the Welsh abbreviation is a plain "S"
none of this however reveals why the virtuous Saint 's name was presumably changed from "Athan" to "Tathan" so just maybe it was some tired hapless and/or confused bilingual monk's typo yonks ago??
He also aparently shortened it from
St. Athanasius
Now is all this intriguing or what???
so endeth today's religion,history,geography and spelling lessons, boys and girls
[ January 02, 2007, 11:09: Message edited by: johnfowles ]