Known to locals as simply Llanfair, this charming Welsh-speaking village is on the isle of Anglesey. I passed through as a lad in '64, en route to my ancestral Ireland for the first time, via ferry to Dun Laoghaire from the Irish Sea port of Holyhead, from where boats have been sailing to Ireland for 4,000 years. You might suppose this magnificent moniker originated in the dawn of Welsh history, or at least at some point before the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffyd in 1282, when, according to the poet David Jones, the really Welsh part of Welsh history came to an end. Alas, the village's long name is a fraud, devised by local businessmen in the 1860s as a publicity stunt to attract tourists--bewhiskered Victorian gentlemen and their buxom ladies--to have themselves photographed next to the sign. It was a time of a growing, if begrudging, awareness of Britain's Celtic fringe, what with Queen Victoria promoting a romantic vision of the Scottish Highlands at Balmoral, and Daniel O'Connell's fight for Catholic Emancipation in Ireland. Today two-thirds of Ireland is independent, and Wales and Scotland have their own parliaments. Now it's time for some reactive Englishness, or maybe a Free Yorkshire movement.  

Oh, and it means  "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave,"  and it's pronounced Llan-vire-pooll-guin-gill-go-ger-u-queern-drob-ooll-llandus-ilio-gogo-goch.