Haha, thanks! @AnthonyCusack I actually can’t remember now where I saw it - on a bilingual leaflet or something.
I just remembered where I saw ‘Sir Penfro’ - I knew I’d seen it somewhere that looked like it should be a reliable source of correct Welsh. It’s in the title of the council’s website: http://www.pembrokeshire.gov.uk/content.asp?language=CYM
Astounding
Is there any chance that the word Cyngor (Council) alters it?
Sir Benfro, but Cyngor Sir Penfro seems pretty wide spread even within the same articles from the BBC.
No - the Sir and the name are in apposition (to use the technical term) and there is a mutation accordingly. It would be like saying Sir Môn for Sir Fôn - sounds just wrong.
I will unkindly and undiplomatically mention that Pembrokeshire has long been known as ‘Little England in Wales’!
It COULD be a marketing decision (though an idiotic one in my view) - try and make the ‘brand’ clear by doing away with variants (i.e. the mutated form) in all official documents.
Good God alive.
And yet they have http://www.sir-benfro.gov.uk/ (correctly) as their alternative url. Genuinely shocking.
Secretly I am quite happy that my Welsh is good enough to spot this anomaly
Despite being ‘little England beyond Wales’, Welsh comes first in road signs in Pembrokeshire. It is also widely spoken in the northern half of the county, above the so-called landsker line. Even below that line, Welsh seems to be more dominant than it used to be when I was growing up - e.g. there is now a very popular Welsh medium primary school in Tenby, which is really the heart of non-Welsh speaking Pembs. As a result, lots of my old (non-Welsh-speaking) school friends have children who are fluent Welsh speakers. I would have KILLED to be able to chat to my friends in a language my parents couldn’t decipher as a kid
Or maybe they are trolling us little Englanders
‘Sir Penfro’ is also in the council’s logo, which you can see on the website. A major cock-up if not deliberate.
I believe I’ve found an 1847 reference to Sir Penfro:
Oh that’s interesting - so perhaps a historical explanation for the decision. I tweeted at the council to ask them - will report back.
You beat me to it!! It seems to me a very good excuse to be bad at Welsh, although I thought it was ‘little England beyond Wales’!
To @Bobi just seen your posting. Back then, I believe spelling was a pretty moveable feast in any language. Far fewer people were literate.
Or just the absence of official standards of spelling etc … according to this website, the first Welsh dictionary only began to be compiled in the 1950s http://www.welsh-dictionary.ac.uk/history/
Yes, that is undoubtedly true even in the last twenty years - I know this because my old friend Dewi Rhys-Jones is prominent in spreading and promoting the learning of the language in this beautiful corner of Wales.
You’re right, of course. My bad!
The more I think about it, the more I lean to my earlier theory that it might be a stupid marketing decision.
I mean, I’m not a native speaker, but I can tell you Sir Penfro sounds just wrong wrong to me. I would probably correct it in class, I think…
Gareth, are you able to explain this rule in less technical language? How would I recognise when two words are in apposition? I assume this is not the same as a common old “contact mutation” (which I think is mostly caused by prepositions). Are there any other words (like Sir) which can cause this kind of mutation?
Thank you!
I was going to say Mike that it’s not a contact mutation (the word Sir doesn’t trigger the mutation, it’s simply that when the two words Sir and (for example) Penfro are used together to mean a single idea, then you get SM joining them…in much the same sort of way as stepmother is llysfam = llys + mam.
But I’ve been thinking a bit more about this overnight (I’m that sad), and it suddenly occurred to me that we always say Sir Gwynedd and not ‘Sir Wynedd’ - so now I am wondering if there really is a hard-and-fast rule for this…
Certainly ‘Sir Penfro’ sounds wrong to me, and Sir Benfro totally right. And I don’t believe anyone would say ‘Sir Câr’ instead of Sir Gâr. But then ‘Sir Wynedd’ on the other hand sounds totally wrong as well. Also, with a different word, everyone would say Ynys Môn and nobody (I’m pretty certain) would say ‘Ynys Fôn’.
And it’s not about gender: sir and ynys both feminine, but definitely Sir Fôn and Ynys Môn.
I’ve never really seen it as this, normally Just Morgannwg, but its Sir Forgannwg.