[1] He was born on 29 September 1910 as the third son of William and Elizabeth Richards (his father was a railway foreman) in Ffair-fach, Llandybie, Llandeilo, Carms.
Following on from that, he was elected to a University Fellowship in 1934 which enabled him to continue his studies in Dublin with the scholars, Osborn Bergin, Myles Dillon and Gerard Murphy, as well as in Paris with Joseph Vendryes, Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste.
Melville Richards published his work in academic journals on the syntax of the sentence in Medieval Welsh and revealed his ability early in his career as he was one of a number of language scholars that were associated with Henry Lewis.
[5] He used his experiences at war to write his only novel Y Gelyn Mewnol (The Enemy Within), an espionage story set in West Wales which won the Bangor National Eisteddfod thriller novel competition in 1943.
He single-handedly produced an historical archive of place-names in Wales and made clear their meaning and significance in a comprehensive Welsh onomasticon.
His research was conducted in a range of fields of study which are: settlement patterns and demography, the history of governance and administration, legal custom and structures, toponyms as well as the more strictly linguistic area.
He also published important articles explaining the significance of place-names and laying out the methodology and scholarly standards in a hazardous area of academic study.