Welsh place names: Bala Cynwyd

28 August 2008

Bala Cynwyd

Bala Cynwyd lies in the Welsh Tract of Pennsylvania, and was settled in the 1680s by Welsh Quaker settlers, who named it after the Welsh town of Bala and the Welsh village of Cynwyd. The American "Cynwyd" is, however, now pronounced /'kɪnwɪd/ ("kinwid"), not /'kənwɪd/ as it would be in the original Welsh pronunciation . It is often pronounced locally as /'kɪnwʊd/ ("kinwood").

Bala Cynwyd is a village in Lower Merion Township which is located in the Main Line in southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia. It was originally two separate towns, Bala and Cynwyd, but is commonly treated as a single community. This came about when a single US Post Office was constructed to service both towns (The "Bala Cynwyd" Branch). Bala and Cynwyd are still served by separate stations on SEPTA's R6 Regional Rail line.

Among the claimants for First Boy Scout Troop in the United States is Troop 1 in Bala Cynwyd.

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The Welsh were added later

The Welsh Tract, also called the Welsh Barony, was a portion of Pennsylvania settled largely by Welsh-speaking Quakers. It covers 40,000 acres to the west of Philadelphia. The original settlers, led by John Roberts, negotiated with William Penn in 1684 to constitute the Tract as a separate county whose local government would use the Welsh language, since many of the settlers spoke no English. Notwithstanding this agreement, by the 1690s the land had already been partitioned into different counties, despite appeals from the Welsh settlers, and the Tract never gained self-government.
The Roberts and other Welsh families became influential in the area, through the building of mills and the eventual introduction of the railroad. It is the railroad that gives the best-known part of the area its current name — the Main Line, referring to the main track of the now-defunct Pennsylvania Railroad.
The area is now part of Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware counties. Many towns in the area still bear Welsh names. Some, such as Bala Cynwyd, Radnor and Haverford Township, are named after places in Wales. Others, such as Tredyffrin or Uwchlan, have independent Welsh names. Some communities in the area that formerly comprised the Welsh Tract were subsequently given Welsh names. Among these were Gladwyne, formerly "Merion Square" (which was given its new name in 1891 in order to imitate the stylish Welsh names of adjoining towns, although the name is meaningless in Welsh), and Bryn Mawr, formerly "Humphreysville" (which was renamed in 1869). An additional Welsh settlement included Bala Cynwyd which originated as two separate towns that have grown together.
A more successful attempt at setting up a Welsh-speaking colony occurred two centuries later, in the Chubut Valley of Patagonia.

Unfortunately, the Cymry-fication of the Main Line was, for the most part, a public relations ploy by the railroad to make the area more 'quaint' and 'historic', rather than an actual naming process. True, there were many Welsh settlers in the area in the 1700s, but the entire 'Welsh Nation' gambit didn't work out like they'd hoped. Only a few of the towns had Welsh names from the beginning, like Malvern and Radnor; the rest were changed, like Athensville to Ardmore, later...

Welsh place names

28 August 2008

Bala Cynwyd

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The Welsh were added later

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