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The route I’ve taken between my home in Cardiff and my parents’ house in the Rhondda for 20 years is undergoing a dramatic change of scenery.

The stretch between the roundabout for Radyr and the junction to Llantrisant used to be a tranquil ride flanked by green fields. But as the nether regions of Cardiff continue their relentless sprawl outwards this thoroughfare is currently punctuated by roadworks as executive housing developments are being plonked amid the greenery.

The pit-stops at the traffic-lights give one time to ponder. Not just thoughts of horror at how choked the already busy Llandaff route into Cardiff will be by the time all these new dwellings are finished. But as the hoarding proclaiming the title of the estate hoves into view all that comes to mind is who came up with a name as daft, unimaginative and woefully inappropriate as Regency Park for a Welsh housing development?

The word “regency” brings many things to mind - none of them remotely related to the area where the development of three-, four- and five-bedroom houses is situated.

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If I were to play a word-association game with regency the image that immediately pops up is of that plump, profligate waster of an English monarch, George IV. Or Jane Austen heroines wafting around Bath in high-waisted frocks fretting over where they’re going to find a husband. Or Hugh Laurie being a spectacularly stupid Prince of Wales in Blackadder the Third.

And if I think of regency in terms of a housing development all I recall is those hideously prissy decorative schemes that were in vogue in the 1980s – striped wallpaper, cherubs and false plaster mouldings around lighting sconces.

But nothing Welsh springs to mind. Does this matter? Of course. Every new development in Wales brings an opportunity to underline the history and character of the land on which it is built rather than erase it.

This is more important in Wales than it has ever been as we’ve witnessed some quite catastrophic PR fails of late which illustrate the perils of being ignorant of our own history and clueless about the importance of a name in a Cymric context.

The furore in Flint, for example. However they tried to spin it, the only thing a big Iron Ring built next to Flint Castle was going to signify for anyone with even the most fleeting acquaintance with Welsh history is Edward I’s oppression of Wales.

The plan to re-name the second Severn crossing after the current Prince of Wales was a similar misjudgement.

Pub names tell a story about their location

And it’s not just a case of anglicisation impacting on Welsh place names, landmarks and establishments – its globalisation as bland, generic branding is favoured over quirky and Cymric.

For centuries pub names have told a story about the location in which they stand, or celebrated a local hero or historical event. Some Cardiff hostelries went through an impressive phase of resisting the usual gastropub generalities in their choice of name. In came the Cayo Arms and Y Mochyn Du. But under new ownership it couldn’t last. They are now respectively The Pontcanna Inn and The Brewhouse and Kitchen.

Of course, going local in the naming stakes is not without risk in an era when reputations are re-evaluated. That’s why The Lord Tonypandy pub name has not stood the test of time. But when calls were made for the popular Valleys carvery to be re-branded surely there was no shortage of Rhondda icons to draw on?

(Image: Rob Browne/WalesOnline)

With the history of remarkable Welsh women neglected for decades they could have finally got in touch with our feminine side – The Annie Powell or The Elizabeth Andrews, perhaps. Or indeed, any vaguely Valleys name would be preferable to the option they finally plumped for: The Fulling Mill.

But wait. According to the Rhondda Cynon Taf library service “The Meadow of the Fulling Mill” is the English translation of the name Tonypandy. They should have gone for the full translation, which would get you wondering what the connection was, unlike The Fulling Mill, which sounds like the kind of pub attached to a Premier Inn in Wolverhampton.

It's deleting your cultural distinctiveness

Or they could have preserved the place name in Welsh in its rebrand while removing its association with George Thomas. The town was around a long time before him and will survive a long time afterwards.

Comedian Tudur Owen brought us a passionate polemic on the importance of Welsh place names this week. Appearing on Wales Live, he expressed his fear that many Welsh place names and the often wondrous tales that accompany them are disappearing as they are replaced by English names that non-Welsh-speakers find easier to remember and pronounce.

While conceding that many Welsh place names tie English-speaking tongues in knots, he stresses replacing them because some can’t pronounce them or just don’t like the sound of them is unacceptable.

“It’s deleting your cultural distinctiveness, your heritage and the uniqueness of these British islands,” he says. “It’s getting rid of one of the oldest languages in Europe, one place name at a time.”

And it’s not just about the erosion of the language. You don’t have to be a Welsh-speaker to appreciate the stories these place names express. Tudur cites the example of Llyn Bochlwyd – with its links to ancient myth – to make this point.

“Llyn Bochlwyd is a tricky one even for me,” he admits. “It’s a lake in the mountains of Eryri – or Snowdonia, in English. Llyn translates to lake and Bochlwyd means grey cheek. Some say the name tells the ancient tale of an old grey stag which was being hunted. It makes a miraculous escape from the hounds and the arrows by plunging into the lake, holding its grey face above the water as it swims to safety.”

It’s a captivating legend and one which would add a magical resonance for any tourist enjoying the beauty of the lake.

But sadly Llyn Bochlwyd has a modern moniker which is more Melbourne than Mabinogi, as Tudur explains: “If you look at some guidebooks for the area it now has a new name - Lake Australia, because the outline looks like the shape of Australia.

"We have a choice. Do we keep these names and stories and tell them to the generations that inhabit this land after we’ve gone? Or do we let them be deleted because they are too difficult to pronounce, and replace them with easy-to-remember English names?”

Place names in Wales charm and intrigue

It’s a no-brainer, surely. I will always be from Llwynypia, even though none of my English friends has ever been able to pronounce it. But when I tell them it means grove of the magpie, or the slightly more innuendo-laden Magpie’s Bush –which always raises a giggle – they are fascinated. Almost every place name in Wales comes with an anecdote that charms and intrigues – and, most importantly, makes our past ever-present and our history and identity come alive.

It’s a choice the developers of Regency Park might want to consider. The full title of the executive housing estate is Regency Park at Llanilltern Village. Why not drop the regency tag altogether and simply stick to the latter? Let the people who buy those luxury houses know they will be living on the site of a sixth-century monastery founded by St Illutus who, according to The Topographical Dictionary of the Dominion of Wales, published in 1811, made it “a place for education in human learning as well as religion so that many worthy men are said to have been brought up here”.

And whatever the traffic conditions, I’d be much happier driving past Llanilltern Village than Regency Park. Let’s live in a country where our road signs don’t just tell us where we’re going, they tell us where we’ve been.