RAILWAY PORTER'S BURDEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22000, 5 January 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

RAILWAY PORTER'S BURDEN

STATION WITH LONG NAME

There is a railway station in Wales that is too small to accommodate its name, and so lias to cut it down to a few syllables, calling itself " Llanfair P. G." The entire name, however, is "Llan fairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrob will la n tvsi 1 iogogogoch.'' Perhaps the porter whose duty it used to be to cry the name out in full when the trains arrived was the first to suggest that it was rather too much of a good thing (suggests the Christian Science Monitor). For a good thing it is—as a matter of fact —with far more sense in it than most people have believed, being a thoughtful direction to strangers as to the best way of reaching the village. Translated from the Welsh the name reads: "The village of the Church of St. Mary which stands in a hollow of white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and to St. Tysilio's Church in the neighbourhood of a red cave." There is something so tuneful and charming about the words that one would like to see them placed oil the station lor all travellers to read.

Here is the English phonetic spelling of the long name. Owing to the fact that Welsh has several sounds unknown in English the spelling can at best only give an idea of the exact sounds: Thlan vir poothl gwin geethl go gayer chooerrn dro booth I thlan tuseeleeo go go goch. (The "i" in vir as in fire. "Ch" as in German lioch.)