The village name is plain enough: aber meaning estuary, Soch being the small river that empties here into Tremadog Bay. In the local Welsh dialect the place is often called Rabar, a short and affectionate form. For most of recorded history Abersoch was a fishing village, modest enough that its growth charts barely registered until the 1950s. Archaeology hints at older occupation: in the drought summer of 2018, aerial photography over Fach Farm picked up crop marks that geophysical survey the following year interpreted as a complex defended enclosure, possibly pre-Roman rather than Roman. Whoever lived here, they chose the same bay later generations would prize.

Tourism took root in the post-war years and accelerated with car ownership. The shallow east-facing bay, sheltered by St Tudwal's Islands offshore, proved ideal for dinghy sailing and small-boat racing. Today Abersoch is the watersports capital of north Wales, packed in summer with windsurfers and jet-skis, with the surf crowd driving across the peninsula to nearby Porth Neigwl when the south-westerly swells push through. From Abersoch Bay on clear days you can see Snowdon, fifty miles north-east across Tremadog Bay. Boat operators run trips out to St Tudwal's, where one of the two small islands has belonged to the survival television presenter Bear Grylls since 2001. The fishing fleet has not disappeared (the Pysgotwyr Llyn Fishermen's Association still works the same waters) but it is no longer what the village runs on.

The 2011 census found 51 per cent of Abersoch's residents had been born in England against 44 per cent born in Wales, and 60 per cent reported no Welsh identity at all, an extraordinary figure for a village deep in the Welsh-speaking heartland of Gwynedd. The arithmetic of holiday homes did the damage. As property prices spiralled, families who had farmed and fished the parish for generations could no longer afford to live there. In June 2021 the council moved to close Ysgol Abersoch, the village's Welsh-medium primary school. More than two hundred written objections were filed. The council voted unanimously to close the school anyway, and the doors shut at Christmas. Children now travel to Ysgol Sarn Bach 1.4 miles up the road, where the figures show 47 per cent of pupils come from Welsh-speaking homes, down from 39 per cent at the school that was closed.

Abersoch was named one of the best places to live in Wales in 2017 by a Wales Online poll. It depends, of course, on who is doing the living. The YesCymru campaign organised public protests against the rate of second-home ownership, and Gwynedd Council formally asked the Welsh Government for legal powers to cap the number of holiday lets in any given community. The bay is still beautiful. The beach huts on Porth Fawr still line up like a row of bright teeth above the sand. The sailing club still runs its summer regattas. And the village still argues, in two languages, about who exactly it is for.