TEMPLAR Wales: A georeferenced environmental and toponymic dataset of Welsh settlements

Oktay Karakuş; Can Eyupoglu

cs.LGAug 27, 2026

TEMPLAR Wales: A georeferenced environmental and toponymic dataset of Welsh settlements

Authors: Oktay Karakuş, Can Eyupoglu

Organizations: Department of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4AG, UK · Department of Computer Engineering, Turkish Air Force Academy, National Defence University, Istanbul 34149, Türkiye

Abstract

Place names provide persistent records of how landscapes have been described and organised, but their quantitative reuse requires explicit separation between mapped places, lexical annotations and environmental measurements. TEMPLAR Wales is a georeferenced environmental-toponymy dataset comprising 3,757 settlement records across Wales. The resource links a reproducible settlement frame to deterministic lexical screening and settlement-level environmental attributes through stable identifiers. It contains 1,350 lexical detections across 1,294 settlements, generated from a frozen registry of 24 Welsh place-name elements, while retaining exact- and prefix-token matches and their provenance separately. Environmental attributes describe river and coastal proximity, elevation and local terrain context at multiple spatial scales, land cover and neighbourhood woody cover, with parallel terrain measurements derived from independent elevation products. The dataset is distributed as four relational tables accompanied by a field-level data dictionary, source-provenance register and licensing metadata. Technical validation confirms relational integrity, deterministic lexical reconstruction, documented environmental coverage, strong agreement between independent terrain sources and reproducible reconstruction of the frozen release. TEMPLAR Wales provides a reusable foundation for research in toponymy, linguistic geography, historical and environmental landscape studies, GIS and spatial data analysis without treating computational lexical detections as verified etymologies or contemporary environmental measurements as historical landscape reconstructions.

Figures & tables

File	Rows	Columns	Content
settlements.csv	3,757	23	Settlement identity, source identifiers, original and analytical name fields, language-status metadata, settlement type, British National Grid coordinates, derived geographic coordinates and grouping fields for repeated names and coincident locations.
lexical_detections.csv	1,350	13	Long-format deterministic ETDE v1 lexical detections linked to settlement records, including canonical element, matched token, token position, match type, semantic classification, preregistered role and analytical-name source.
environmental_attributes.csv	3,757	47	Settlement-level hydrological, coastal, terrain and land-cover attributes, including OS Terrain 50 measures at multiple neighbourhood scales, Copernicus GLO-90-derived terrain attributes, CORINE-derived land-cover and woody-cover variables, and associated quality or eligibility fields.
lexical_registry.csv	24	11	Frozen lexical registry containing canonical Welsh place-name elements, project-authored concise glosses, semantic domains, preregistered roles, source identifiers and locators, interpretation limitations and registry version information.

Table 1: Primary data records in the TEMPLAR Wales dataset.

Figure 1: Dataset overview and construction architecture. (a) Geographic distribution of the 3,757 retained Welsh settlement records. (b) The lexical stream applies analytical-name selection, the 24-element lexical registry and ETDE v1 to generate lexical_detections.csv ; the environmental stream derives settlement-level attributes from OS Open Rivers, OS Terrain 50, OS Boundary-Line, CORINE 2018 and Copernicus GLO-90. The lower portion shows the four released scientific tables and their principal templar_id and canonical-element relationships. Supporting metadata provide field definitions, provenance, licensing and release-integrity information. Contains OS data © Crown Copyright and database rights 2026.

Figure 2: Geographic coverage and composition of the released lexical resource. (a) Settlements with one or more registered ETDE v1 detections are shown in orange (n = 1,294); settlements with no registered detection are shown in grey (n = 2,463). (b) At settlement level, 1,238 records have one detection and 56 have two detections. At detection level, the long-format table contains 378 exact-token and 972 prefix-token detections. These are descriptive properties of the released lexical resource; absence of a registered detection does not imply absence of Welsh etymology or historical linguistic significance. Contains OS data © Crown Copyright and database rights 2026.

Attribute group	Available records	Coverage (%)
Nearest-river distance (OS Open Rivers)	3,757 / 3,757	100.0
Coastal distance (OS Boundary-Line HWM)	3,757 / 3,757	100.0
OS Terrain 50 attributes	3,757 / 3,757	100.0
Copernicus GLO-90 2-km terrain attributes	3,757 / 3,757	100.0
CORINE point-level land-cover attributes	3,757 / 3,757	100.0
Woody-cover fraction, 500 m	3,619 / 3,757	96.3

Table 2: Coverage of the principal environmental attribute groups in the released settlement frame. Coverage refers to records with an eligible released measurement and should be interpreted together with the corresponding quality, coverage and eligibility fields.

Terrain measure	Pearson $r$	Mean difference (m)	MAE (m)	RMSE (m)
Terrain reference	0.9999158	1.05	1.18	1.63
Local terrain position	0.9950185	0.17	2.70	4.04

Table 3: Agreement between settlement-level terrain attributes independently derived from OS Terrain 50 and Copernicus DEM GLO-90. All comparisons use the complete 3,757-settlement frame at the 2-km analysis scale.

Figure 3: Independent terrain-source technical validation. Agreement between terrain attributes independently derived from OS Terrain 50 and Copernicus DEM GLO-90 for all 3,757 settlements. (a) 2-km terrain reference and (b) 2-km local terrain position. In each column, the upper panel shows paired values with the 1:1 identity line; the lower panel shows the Copernicus-minus-OS difference against the paired mean. Solid horizontal lines show mean differences and dashed lines show 95% limits of agreement (mean difference $\pm 1.96$ SD). Units are metres. This comparison is technical validation of independent terrain derivations and does not designate either source as absolute ground truth.

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Terrain signatures in Welsh settlement names

Oktay Karakuş, Can Eyupoglu

Department of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 4AG, UK · Department of Computer Engineering, Turkish Air Force Academy, National Defence University, Istanbul 34149, Türkiye

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Landscapes are named, but whether names retain measurable environmental information beyond broad geographic structure is rarely tested. We analysed 3,757 Welsh settlements using a frozen, source-audited 24-element lexical framework, preregistered outcome-specific models and geographically structured validation. The central comparison contrasted 101 settlements carrying high-terrain elements (bryn or mynydd) with 139 carrying low-terrain elements (cwm or pant). High-terrain names occupied locations 24.4 m higher relative to their 2-km surroundings (95% CI, 10.8--38.1 m; Holm-adjusted

p

= 0.00137). The association remained positive across prespecified 1-, 2- and 5-km neighbourhood definitions and was reproduced using an independently produced elevation source (24.1 m; 95% CI, 10.6--37.6 m). Adding terrain-name polarity to a non-lexical spatial and settlement baseline reduced geographically held-out mean squared error by 4.63%, 6.22% and 7.30% under 10-, 25- and 50-km spatial blocking, respectively, although improvement varied among held-out regions. River-related names provided weaker, directionally consistent evidence, while the preregistered woodland model was non-estimable. Residual spatial structure, unresolved name language and the absence of independent external replication limit interpretation. Selected Welsh settlement-name categories therefore retain measurable information about present-day terrain within Wales, without establishing individual etymology, causal naming, historical environmental memory or transferability to other naming systems.

Abstract

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