Indigenous Place Names

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 2:00 pm on 7 February 2018.

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Photo of Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas Independent 2:00, 7 February 2018

(Translated)

I do have some difficulty with the word 'indigenous', or otherwise I would have to speak Brythonic in this place. But to be serious, the heritage of place names is key, and the statutory list is part of the Government strategy for that. It was published in May 2017, and it is kept by the commission on ancient monuments, which is a very important commission in my view, and will continue to be so. The register is free online. There are over 350,000 individual names to be seen on that schedule. There is a full-time curator maintaining that list, and it continues to grow consistently. The way of strengthening appreciation of historic names is that people should be able to see them—that they are visual as part of their daily lives.

I'm not in favour of doing away with names in languages such as English used in Wales side by side with the Welsh names, because I don't believe that that would be appropriate or consistent with the bilingualism legislation that we have. However, I am most confident that the public bodies—the national parks, Natural Resources Wales and so on—will continue to pay attention to the statutory guidelines on the use of the records of the historic environment, and particularly these records of place names.