( I have recently returned to Australia after a research trip to Wales and I ) have a query about bilingual place names. My name, Rhydwen, was the name ( of my great grandfather. He changed by deed poll from Parry to Rhydwen ) which was the Welsh name for the village, Whitford, where he lived. Due to ( changes in the A55 since my last visit, I found myself driving past road ) signs pointing to Whitford, but, it had become, in Welsh, Chwitffordd. ( How? Who decided? What does it mean? Surely it is is just a ) transliteration of Whitford rather than a translation? I was very ( disappointed to find that the village I was named after no longer ) existed..... I am also curious about how this happened. Can anyone tell ( me? To answer the question literally, who decides what goes on road signs is the planning authority, in this case Cyngor Sir Clwyd. As it happens, I think I know about this Rhydwen/Chwitffordd. There have been people who called it Rhydwen in relatively recent times, but I remember hearing Bedwyr Lewis Jones citing Chwitffordd as a modern spelling of Chwitfforth, which was the usual Welsh usage from as far back as the thirteenth century. It is, of course it is, just a Welsh spelling of Whitford, but that makes it a sign of the Welsh reclaiming lands that were very English when it was Widford in the Domesday survey. Chwitffordd used to be in a relatively narrow strip of English Wales in very Welsh territory. He was all for seeing it as a proud badge of the history of the place. Anyone who feels very strongly that Chwitffordd should be called Rhydwen is either inconsistent (and I see nothing wrong in being inconsistent), or presumably also thinks that Prestatyn just down the road ought to be called Tirabad or Tiroffeiriad or something like that, but I have never heard that suggested. The name of a place is, of course, what it is called. If the place is Rhydwen for you and the community in which you live and speak of the place, than that is its name to you. I have always known it as Chwitffordd, myself; but then I come from within sight of a place I usually know as Wrecsam, and that name does not bear thinking about. At least it is no longer called Gwrecsam as it was until the last century. There seems little mileage in 'translating' place names: my only feeble excuse for calling Oxford "Rhydychen" is that it has been called that for centuries. One no more expects this sort of "translation" than one expects the English to rename all those places in Cumbria and along the Scottish border and along the Welsh Marches which have 'English' names that are merely transliterations of the Welsh. g