Newport, Wales name "Novus Burgus", meaning new borough or new town. The city can sometimes be found labelled as "Newport-on-Usk" on old maps. The original Welsh language name for the city, "Casnewydd-ar-Wysg" (pronounced ) means 'New castle-on-Usk' (this is a shortened version of "Castell Newydd ar Wysg") and this refers to the twelfth-century castle ruins near Newport city centre. The original Newport Castle was a small motte-and-bailey castle in the park opposite Newport Cathedral. It was buried in rubble excavated from the Hillfield railway tunnels that were dug under Stow Hill in the 1840s and no part of it is currently visible.
History of the Welsh language However, although Welsh is the daily language in many parts of Wales, English is universally understood. Further, overall figures may be misleading and it might be argued that the density of welsh speakers (which, if high, leads to a thriving welsh culture) is an equally important statistic. Put another way, were 50,000 additional welsh speakers to be concentrated in areas where welsh is spoken by at least 50% of the population, this would be much more important to the sustainability of the welsh language than the same number dispersed in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea cities. In the 2011 census it