The first book to investigate all major place-names in the county of Carmarthenshire has been published.

The Place-Names of Carmarthenshire investigates and explains the origins and meanings of the names of 920 towns, villages and hamlets in the historic county of Carmarthenshire (1536-1974), including those transferred to Pembrokeshire in 1996.

The result of years of detailed research by Richard Morgan, a former archivist at Powys Archives and Glamorgan Archives and author of Place-Names of Glamorgan published in 2018, Place Names of Carmarthenshire also contains a 1,000-entry Glossary of place-name elements, personal names and rivers.

Speaking about his new book, which is available in paperback and as an ebook from all booksellers, Richard Morgan said: “Tracing the history of Welsh place-names is a fascinating undertaking as it casts light upon the ways in which our ancestors lived and how they thought about the world around them.

“The origin and meaning of place-names, however, is not always easy to determine because their written and spoken forms

have often changed over time and particularly when the language in a particular location switched from Welsh to English. Fortunately, Carmarthenshire was not so markedly affected in this respect as many other parts of Wales but it is still easy to be misled by modern spellings.”

Some examples of the misunderstandings identified in Place-Names of Carmarthenshire include:

Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen), which does not - as many believed - recall the name of the mythological Myrddin (Merlin) in the Arthurian tales but is instead derived from morddin (môr / ‘sea’ and din / ‘fort’) describing a Roman maritime fort - the precursor of the medieval borough.

“In addition to the hundreds of entries that unravel the mysteries of the county’s place-names, the book also features many intriguing illustrations of Carmarthenshire’s historic towns and villages,” said Mr. Morgan. “I would also wish to thank the Welsh Place-Names Society and the Mark Fitch Fund for their generous financial support that has enabled the publication of this important new study.”