: 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
Thanks for looking for this information, zeph.
By the way Muirthemne is Irish (more or less) and refers to Cuchlain and his legend some how.
Does anyone know of any other Celtic (Irish,Welsh,Scotish) things about the Cath Bruig Empire (the name maybe, but I'm not up my roots as much I would like to be ideally, probably because it would be a lot of work)
Heck for that matter, not counting the word Fir Bolg and the accents of the 'zerks (perhaps the "warpaint") how much Myth stuff period has such roots?
Maelduin and Cu Roi are from Irish legends.
I know that much.
If anyone wants to go to the trouble of this research I would be very grateful (I would but I don't have any real idea where to look for it)
translation: I'm too lazy to look it up,:)
Thanks for your time and energy fellow myth story fans.
Seraph
