Jones (surname)
Encyclopedia
Jones is a common Celtic Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 surname based on the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 version of the parent's name ending in -S. In 1881 people with this surname were largely confined to Wales. By 1998 many Welsh people had migrated to cities in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 particularly those adjacent to Wales. The earliest record of the name occurs in England, in the late 13th century. The name is derived from a patronymic
Patronymic
A patronym, or patronymic, is a component of a personal name based on the name of one's father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor. A component of a name based on the name of one's mother or a female ancestor is a matronymic. Each is a means of conveying lineage.In many areas patronyms...

 form of the Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

 personal names Jon and Jone, and thus roughly means in modern English "son of John
John (given name)
John is a masculine given name in the English language. The name is derived from the Latin Ioannes, Iohannes, which is in turn a form of the Greek , Iōánnēs. This Greek name is a form of the Hebrew name , , which means "God is generous"...

". Surnames representing John cognate with the late formation Welsh Siôn such as Jones and John
John (surname)
John as a last name could also refer to South Asian last name infusion by British colonies. It could be traced to mixed ancestry or colonial adaptation of the name by the locals. Many last name in South Asian countries are found to have mixed ancestry...

 are particularly common in Wales. The name Jones is extremely common throughout the English-speaking world
English-speaking world
The English-speaking world consists of those countries or regions that use the English language to one degree or another. For more information, please see:Lists:* List of countries by English-speaking population...

, especially Wales. In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the name has absorbed many surnames in other languages which have a similar sound, or meaning.

History

The first known record of the surname Jones is dated 1279, in Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire is a local government district of Cambridgeshire, covering the area around Huntingdon. Traditionally it is a county in its own right...

, England.

In 1813-1841, there were about 85,000 people named Jones living in England (0.43% of the population) and about 145,000 people named Jones living in Wales (13.84% of the total population)
By 1881, migration to the urban centres of England had equalised the numbers so that both countries had a little over 163,000 people named Jones recorded in the census of that year.
Even so, it shows some areas of North Wales still had very high proportions of people carrying the name, for example in Sir Feirionnydd (Merionethshire) 23.6% and Sir Gaernarfon
Caernarfonshire
Caernarfonshire , historically spelled as Caernarvonshire or Carnarvonshire in English during its existence, was one of the thirteen historic counties, a vice-county and a former administrative county of Wales....

(Caernarfonshire) 22.3% were named Jones compared with 10.4% in Wales as a whole and 0.67% in England. Other, more readily identifiable Welsh names, such as Lloyd
Lloyd (surname)
The name Lloyd is a variation of the Welsh word llwyd or clwyd, which means "grey" or "brown". The double-l represents the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative of Welsh, and was sometimes also represented as fl, yielding the related name Floyd....

and Price (from ap Rhys), had greater proportions of their numbers living in England than Wales in 1881 - this may be because of the higher concentrations of Jones in Welsh speaking areas.

It is likely that a number of Afro-Caribbean and African Joneses got their names from freed slaves adopting the names of the estate managers or owners.

20th and 21st centuries

According to the UK National Trust Jones is the second most numerous surname in the UK. There were 391,909 Joneses on the UK electoral register in 1998. This represents a rate of 10,521 Joneses per million Britons or just over 1% of the population. The proportion of Joneses in other Anglophone countries is slightly lower: the 2002 rate in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 was 6,548 per million; Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, 3,882 per million; and 2002 New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, 5,499 per million.
This name is much rarer in the Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

 with a rate of only 144 per million in 2003. The 1990 United States census provides a frequency of 0.62%, providing an overall rank of 4th most frequent (following Williams
Williams (surname)
Williams is a patronymic form of the name William that originated in medieval England and later came to be extremely popular in Wales. The meaning is derived from son or descendant of Guillemin, the French form of William. Derived from an Old French given name with Germanic elements; will =...

 and preceding Brown
Brown (surname)
Brown is a surname of English and Scottish origin. It also originates independently in the United States, as an Anglicization of several other surnames, such as the German Braun. Among the earliest recorded Browns is John Brown of Stamford, Lincolnshire, England in 1312. Brown is one of the most...

).

See also

  • List of people with surname Jones
  • List of People named Lloyd Jones or LLoyd-Jones
    Lloyd Jones
    Lloyd Peniston Jones was an American athlete. He competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics in London.In the 800 metres, Jones finished third in his semifinal heat and did not advance to the final....

  • Keeping up with the Joneses
    Keeping up with the Joneses
    "Keeping up with the Joneses" is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one's neighbor as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods...

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