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Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a large village and community on the island of Anglesey in Wales, situated on the Menai Strait next to the Britannia Bridge and across the strait from Bangor. It has the longest place name in Europe and one of the longest place names in the world. The short form of the name is Llanfairpwllgwyngyll or Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll. It is commonly known as Llanfair PG or Llanfairpwll.LlanfairPG - The long form of the name is the longest officially recognised place name in the United Kingdom and one of the longest in the world at 58 characters (51 letters since "ch" and "ll" are digraphs, or single letters, in the Welsh language).
The name means: [St.] Mary's Church (Llanfair) [in] the hollow (pwll) of the white hazel (gwyngyll) near (goger) the rapid whirlpool (y chwyrndrobwll) [and] the church of [St.] Tysilio (llantysilio) with a red cave ([a]g ogo goch).
This village was originally known as Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll (and is sometimes still referred to as Llanfairpwllgwyngyll) and was given its long name in the 19th century in an attempt to develop it as a commercial and tourist centre. The village is still signposted Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, marked on Ordnance Survey maps as Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll and known to locals as Llanfairpwll or Llanfair.
The name is also shortened to Llanfair PG, which is sufficient to distinguish it from the many other Welsh villages with Llanfair in their names. Other variant forms use the full name but with tysilio mutated to dysilio, and/or with a hyphen between drobwll and llan. In Welsh, the initial Ll may be mutated to a single L in some contexts.
At the 2001 census the population of the community was 3,040, 76% of whom speak Welsh fluently; the highest percentage of speakers is in the 10–14 age group, where 97.1% speak Welsh. It is the sixth largest settlement on the island by population.
Visitors stop at the railway station to be photographed next to the station sign, visit the nearby Visitors' Centre, or have 'passports' stamped at a local shop. Another tourist attraction is the nearby Marquess of Anglesey's Column, which at a height of 27 metres (89 ft) offers views over Anglesey and the Menai Strait. Designed by Thomas Harrison, the monument celebrates the heroism of Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey at the Battle of Waterloo.
The long name cannot be considered an authentic Welsh-language toponym. It was artificially contrived in the 1860s to bestow upon the station the honour of having the longest name of any railway station in Britain, an early example of a publicity stunt. The village's web site credits the name to a cobbler from the local village of Menai Bridge. According to Sir John Morris-Jones the name was created by a local tailor, whose name he did not confide, letting the secret die with him. The current postmark shows the name Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, but there are contemporary examples of the full name seen below. The name was used in the 1960's cult film Barbarella (Jane Fonda) as the password for Dildano's headquarters: Dildano: [radioing instructions to the rebel army] And our password will be... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Barbarella: You mean the secret password is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch? Dildano: Exactly.
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