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Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (St Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave), a village on the island of Anglesey in Wales is the longest official placename in the United Kingdom and the third-longest in the world. For most purposes, however, the name is abbreviated to Llanfair PG (or Llanfairpwll among Welsh speakers) which is sufficient to distinguish it from other Welsh places named Llanfair. It is a popular tourist destination, many people stopping at the railway station to have their photos taken next to the station sign, visiting the nearby Visitors' Centre or having their passports stamped at a local shop. Another tourist attraction is the nearby Marquis of Anglesey's Column, giving views over Anglesey and the Menai Straits.
The name was contrived in the 1860s by the village council, specifically for the privilege and prestige of having "the longest name of a railway station in Great Britain". It could not be considered an authentic word from Welsh. In fact, the original name of the place was Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll, which itself is respectably long (though only having 17 letters in the Welsh alphabet as opposed to 20 in English).
A reasonable attempt at a pronunciation would be Clan vire pulth gwinn gith gor gerrick win drob uth clan tay see lee oh go go gogch. (The "gch" in the final syllable is the "glottal h" sound, similar to the sound used in the Yiddish "l'chaim". Saying gok glottally produces more or less the same effect.) Two lls can be pronounced either as 'cl' or 'l', or more precisely as an 'l', while passing air around the tongue (try blowing while saying "l").
There have been several unofficial attempts to steal Llanfair PG's record - for promotional ( Gorsafawddacha'idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion) or protest ( Llanhyfryddawelllehynafolybarcudprindanfygythiadtrienusyrhafnauole) reasons, but none of these "new names" have yet won the widespread recognition gained by by Llanfair PG among key official bodies and transport authorities (though in practice the shorter form tends to be used on a day-to-day basis).
The name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is also used as a password in the movie version of Barbarella.
See also: List of interesting or unusual place names
External links
- Llanfair PG - article at H2G2
- llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk - past official village website, which had the longest InternetThis article is about the Internet the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking''. WWW information network structu domain nameThe Domain Name System or DNS is a system that stores information about host names and domain names in a kind of distributed database on networks, such as the Internet. Most importantly, it provides an IP address for each host name, and lists the mail exc when it was set up (archived version from the Wayback Machine, the real site is now defunct)
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