P H E N T I N T H R O W
Never heard of such a place. What's worth rememebring here is that there is quite a lot of room for error.
- Perhaps dear Annie Towson (nee Jones) did not pronounce it correctly
- Perhaps the person taking the census at their doorestep just interepreted what she said and just wrote it down the way it sounded.
(I'm assuning now that the census was taken in a place outside of Wales? Where was it taken?)
- Perhaps the transcription is wrong.
A good start would be if you could attach a copy of the image - perhaps just showing the place name so we can look at it.
The other thing I've been playing around with (and I know Kazza has been doing the same) is trying to "make" the place name a Welsh one. (I'm a Welsh speaker by the way!)
P H E N T I N T H R O W
First of all, there's a thing in the Welsh language called "mutation" which is where the first letter (or two letters) of a word can change depending on the word that came before it.
If for example I said in welsh I came "from Penrhyn" I would say "o Phenrhyn"
So, your place name could start with "PEN" rather that "PHEN". "Pen" is also a common start to place names and means the "top of" or "head of"
The other thing is pronounciation. The letters "PH" are pronounced the same as the letter "F" in "FROM" so your place name could start with "FEN" or "FFEN"
The end letters "THROW" isn't the kind of word structure you would see in Welsh becasue the "W" in that context doesn't seem to sound right at all. So your place name could well end, instead of the letters "THROW" with the letters "DDO" "THO" "THRO" or "THRAU" (my favorite is "THRO")
Lastly, it's possible that the "Place Name" is actually the name of a farm where she was born.
Obviously if we are a letter out with the transcript then that will make a LOT of difference - the Welsh alphabet has double letters that count as one letter... So please post the image of the place name fro us to have a look.
