Searching on Google I found that Llancarfan is a Welsh Town. (Llancarfan should be pronounced chLancarfan).
Here is a copy of what the towns town council website said about the origin of the name
"Llancarfan – what’s in a Name?
By John Etherington
“Local names are never mere arbitrary sounds. They may always be
regarded as records of the past”. Isaac Taylor (1864)
The name of our village is over 1000 years old in its earliest written form. The 9th- or 10th-century Irish Life of St Finnian mentions it as Lann Gharban and the 11th century Life of St Cadoc refers to the “abbot of Nantcarfan”.
The Welsh prefixes, Llan- and Nant-, recur throughout the history of Llancarfan. In place-names, Llan- is usually translated as “church” or, by adoption, “village”. Llan- formerly meant “an enclosure” and, because the early Celtic monks fenced or walled their religious settlements, the word became synonymous with “church” or “village”. Nant- is less complicated, meaning “valley” and, again by adoption, “stream”.
Llancarfan church is dedicated to St Cadoc, better known in Welsh as Cattwg so we might expect our village to be Llancattwg, Llangattock or even Cadoxton. Equally, it might be Nantcattwg, if coupled with the Nant- prefix. However, as it is none of these, we have a mystery.
Glamorgan place-name expert, Gwynedd Pierce, explains that Llancarfan is not a proper llan- name at all. Llan-, in this case, is a later substitution for the original Welsh Nant The 12th century or even earlier form, was Nant Carban or Nant Carfan. The second element was an Old-Welsh personal name.
St Cadoc is widely, but not universally, accepted as the founder of the monastery which became the village of Llancarfan. Another candidate is St German, otherwise known as Garvan or Garman. The 19th century antiquarian, G.T. Clark, wrote: “the Carvan brook has been held to preserve the name of Garvan”. However, this is open to suspicion as it allowed Llancarfan to be claimed as early 5th-century and, thus, the oldest monastic foundation in Britain. Tales of monastic priority and superiority abound in The Lives of the Saints, the writers’ having mastered “spin” better than most modern politicians, and with equal credibility!
Another origin is derived from The Life of St Cadoc, which claims that the saint was helped by two stags in the labour of building the monastery. The translation from the Life reads:- “two stags, yoked after the manner of oxen and drawing a wagon” which gave the name Nant Carwan from ‘valley’ (Nant) and ‘stag’ (carw). [Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae Geneologiae, Wade Evans, 1944]
Fairy tale or not, the Llancarfan Community Council uses the stag emblem and it is sported on the Llancarfan Society Newsletter, notepaper and neckties. In the more distant past a stag appeared in the family crest of the Basset family of Bonvilston and three adorn the shield of Jesus College, Oxford which, to this day, owns much land in the parish. "
Also its a name of an Australian "German Spitz" Kennel!!!
-zeph
