We say we want Welsh place names… so why aren’t we using them?

Stephen Rule (Doctor Cymraeg)

There’s a certain type of post that does the rounds on social media every few months; along the lines of: “We should be using Welsh place-names in Wales.”

And… yes. We should. But I always find myself wondering the same thing. Who exactly are we waiting for? Because the truth, for me, is slightly uncomfortable.

For most of us, most of the time, nothing is actually stopping us. If you live in Wales and you believe in using Welsh place-names… you can just use them. On your letters. On your parcels. On your delivery apps. Websites, invoices, official forms…

No law is stopping you. No system is rejecting you. No one is confiscating your post because you wrote Caerdydd instead of Cardiff.

And yet… we don’t. Or at least, not consistently.

We talk about Welsh place-names like they’re something that needs to be “restored” or “given back” to us, as if they’re locked away somewhere, waiting for permission. But many of them aren’t locked away at all. We’ve just… stopped using them.

Now, to be clear, this isn’t about pretending the English names don’t exist.

Places like Cardiff or Wrexham didn’t appear out of nowhere. They’re part of the historical layering of Wales. Languages have met, overlapped, and left their marks.

For better or worse, those names are part of our story now. But preserving them doesn’t mean defaulting to them. It doesn’t mean they have to be the names we use in our own lives, in our own writing, in our own day-to-day choices.

Because the moment you switch from Cardiff to Caerdydd, or from Wrexham to Wrecsam, nothing breaks. The letter still arrives. The parcel still turns up. The world keeps spinning.

Quick side note on Wrecsam seeing as it’s the place I first saw daylight: Yes, it comes from an English word, but it was Wryhtel[hamm], not Wrexham! At some point, people decided to call it Wrexham… and we are just as entitled now to start calling it Wrecsam IF WE CHOOSE TO.

It doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s where we want to take it into the future. And if that’s a Welshified version of a modern English version of an Old English name… I’m here for it! But I digress…

There’s also a part that we don’t really like to admit. If we can’t be bothered to click “enter address manually” when a website auto-fills the English version… This probably isn’t for you.

Because rather than waiting for systems to change, this is about whether you’re willing to make the smallest possible decision, over and over again, until it becomes normal.

There’s another slightly awkward truth as well. If you go on Wikipædia and look up places like Caerdydd or Wrecsam, you’ll notice something. Outside of Wales, almost every language in the world uses the English forms. “Cardiff.” “Wrexham.” Etc.

The only languages that consistently use the Welsh names? The Celtic ones. Which means… if we’re not using them, there aren’t many others who will either.

And even now, as I’m writing this, I can feel it happening. Autocomplete offers me “Wrexham.” Clean. Easy. Done. Wrexham doesn’t even take an extra second. It takes a choice. And that choice… is where our language lives or dies.

And you don’t have to be fluent in Welsh to be part of this. In fact, choosing the place-names we gave ourselves over the English ones is one of the simplest ways of supporting the language. You don’t need ‘perfect grammar.’ You don’t need confidence speaking. You don’t need to “be a Welsh speaker”. You just need to choose.

Because every time you write Caerdydd instead of Cardiff, or Abertawe instead of Swansea, you’re putting Welsh back into the public space. You’re saying: this still exists. We’re still here.

This isn’t really about policy. It’s about habit. It’s about what we type without thinking. What we default to. What we feel is “normal”.

And habits don’t change because of posts. They change because of use. Quiet, boring, everyday use. Not as a statement. Not as a performance. Just… as the name.

Because if we say we support Welsh place-names, but only use them in theory or online or when it feels appropriate, then it’s not really a movement. It’s just branding.

Find out more about Doctor Cymraeg’s books and lessons via his website, or follow him on X and Instagram.