Welsh hype

[Joel S. Berson]

Mark Mandel wrote:
>The village's 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 the United Kingdom: an early example of a publicity
>stunt.

I am interested in this, however.  Mark, why do you call it "an early
example of a publicity
stunt"?  Just to go back one century, surely a lot of what George
Whitefield and his flack William Seward wrote about Whitefield's
enthusiastic and multitudinous auditories was publicity hype.  And
one must be able to go earlier -- probably much earlier.

Joel

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