Llan (placename)

Llan (Welsh pronunciation: [ɬan]) and its variants (Breton: lan; Cornish: lann; Pictish: lhan; Irish and Scottish Gaelic: lann[1]) are a common element of Celtic placenames in the British Isles and Brittany, especially of Welsh toponymy. In Welsh the (often mutated) name of a local saint or a geomorphological description[2] follows the Llan morpheme to form a single word: for example Llanfair is the parish or settlement around the church of St. Mair (Welsh for "Mary"). Goidelic toponyms end in -lann.

The various forms of the word are distantly cognate with English land and lawn and presumably initially denoted a specially cleared and enclosed area of land.[3][4] In late antiquity it came to be applied particularly to the sanctified land occupied by communities of Christian converts. It is part of the name of more than 630 locations in Wales and nearly all have some connection with a local patron saint. These were usually the founding saints of the parish,[5] relatives of the ruling families who invaded Wales during the early Middle Ages.[6] The founder of a new llan was obliged to reside at the site and to eat only once a day, each time taking a bit of bread and an egg and drinking only water and milk. This lasted for forty days, Sundays excepted, after which the land was considered sanctified for ever.[5] The typical llan employed or erected a circular or oval embankment with a protective stockade, surrounded by wooden or stone huts.[7] Unlike Saxon practice, these establishments were not chapels for the local lords but almost separate tribes, initially some distance away from the secular community.[8] Over time, however, it became common for prosperous communities to become either monasteries forbidden to lay residents or fully secular communities controlled by the local lord.[9]

In the later Middle Ages llan also came to denote entire parishes, both as an ecclesiastical region and as a subdivision of a commote or hundred.

  1. ^ Watson, W.J.; Taylor, Simon (2011). The Celtic Place-Names of Scotland (reprint ed.). Birlinn LTD. p. 387. ISBN 9781906566357.
  2. ^ A number of placenames now beginning with llan owe their present form to confusion, having originated as glan ("river bank") or nant ("stream, hollow"). An example is Llanbradach, which was originally Nant Bradach ("Valley of the Bradach"). An example in Cornish is Lanteglos, from an original Nanseglos ("Church Valley").
  3. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "land, n.¹". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1901.
  4. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "laund, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1902.
  5. ^ a b Baring-Gould, Sabine. The Lives of the Saints, Vol. 16, "The Celtic Church and its Saints", p. 67. Longmans, Green, & Co. (New York), 1898.
  6. ^ Baring-Gould, p. 40.
  7. ^ Baring-Gould, p. 33.
  8. ^ Baring-Gould, p. 92.
  9. ^ Baring-Gould, pp. 37–38.