Cathays from Old English haga. An unlikely explanation which is sometimes found is that it is from 'Cad Hayes' – cad, the Welsh word for battle, and the various shades of meaning of the medieval English hague/hay above. The current term shares its orthography, but not its pronunciation nor meaning with 'Cathay', an alternative name for China. By the medieval period farmland outside the old Cardiff Castle, Cathays takes in the northern limit of medieval Cardiff — marked by the crossroads of Fairoak Road and Crwys Road. After John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute, married The Hon. Charlotte Hickman-Windsor (daughter of
Splott medieval times, and a derivation of "plat", meaning a grassy area of land. The name of the original farm would seem to be Middle English "splott", from Old English (speck, blot, patch of land) and the word is to be found in other English place names in the Vale of Glamorgan, Gower, and Pembrokeshire, as well as in Somerset and Devon, in the West Country of England, from where it was presumably introduced by English settlers. It has frequently been noted on lists of unusual place names. The population of Splott in the United Kingdom Census 2001 was 12,074, in