Brecon Beacons National Park has announced that it will use its Welsh language name only in future. The switch - to Bannau Brycheiniog National Park - takes effect on Monday, its 66th anniversary.
Park bosses said the change promotes the area’s culture and heritage, but the area MP said the English name could be kept alongside the Welsh. It is part of a wider overhaul of how the park is managed, to try and address serious environmental challenges.
The Welsh name means “the peaks of Brychan’s kingdom” and is pronounced ban-aye bruch-ay-nee-og, with the ch making the same sound as in loch.
Brycheiniog - named after 5th Century King Brychan - was an independent kingdom in the early middle ages, and its borders roughly match those of the national park today.
Laura Howell, from the Gower, Swansea, said: “People will probably keep calling it the Brecon Beacons I imagine, but for those who are Welsh speakers it’s a bit of pride and I think it’s great that it will be referred to the Welsh way of saying it. I think it’s a step forward. We live in Wales, so it should be the case.”
Mark Jones, from nearby Mountain Ash, Rhondda Cynon Taf, said: “We have bilingual names in Wales and I think it should be a person’s choice if they call it by the English name or the Welsh name. The vast majority of people in Wales are not Welsh speakers as their first language and they will continue to call it the Brecon Beacons. I feel it is political and being forced on people slightly. They are making a big point out of it but the reality is people are still going to call it the Brecon beacons.”
The Conservative MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, Fay Jones, said she had no prior notice of the name change. “I think a lot of people were a little taken aback by this decision,” she said. People who live and work in the national park… want to celebrate Welsh culture. But why not use the Welsh name alongside the English name?"
Ms Jones said she had received several messages of concern from constituents and had been “talking to a local business owner this morning who asked if she’d missed a consultation of a chance to feed in her views”.
Bannau Brycheiniog National Park’s chief executive, Catherine Mealing-Jones, said: “It just felt the right time to reclaim the old name for the area. [It] reflects our commitment to the Welsh language. But we understand people are used to calling the park by the name everyone’s used for 66 years, so we don’t expect everyone to use it, at least straight away.”
It is the second of Wales’ national parks to adopt a Welsh-only name, following Eryri (formerly Snowdonia) last year.
Personally, I have nothing against Welsh renaming but this one seems somewhat unilateral … 