Welsh surnames
Encyclopedia
Family name
A family name is a type of surname and part of a person's name indicating the family to which the person belongs. The use of family names is widespread in cultures around the world...
s were adopted in Wales
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...
from the 15th century onwards. Hitherto, the Welsh
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
had 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...
naming system.
History
In 1292, 48 per cent of Welsh names were patronymics, and in some parishes over 70 per cent. Other names were derived from nicknameNickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
s, (rarely) occupational names, and a few non-hereditary personal names. Patronymic names changed from generation to generation, with a person's baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
al name being linked by ap, ab (son of) or ferch (daughter of) to the father's baptismal name to perhaps the seventh generation. For example, Evan son of Thomas would be known as Evan (ap) Thomas; Evan's son, John would be John (ab) Evan; John's son Rees would be Rees (ap) John; and David's son, James, would be James (ap) David.
Patronymics were essentially a genealogical history
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
of the family (or its male line), and names such as Llewelyn ap Dafydd ab Ieuan ap Griffith ap Meredith were not uncommon. The Encyclopedia of Wales surmises that the system arose from Welsh law
Welsh law
Welsh law was the system of law practised in Wales before the 16th century. According to tradition it was first codified by Hywel Dda during the period between 942 and 950 when he was king of most of Wales; as such it is usually called Cyfraith Hywel, the Law of Hywel, in Welsh...
, which made it essential for people to know how people were descended from an ancestor. These laws were decaying by the later Middle Ages, and the patronymic system was gradually replaced by fixed surnames, although the use of patronymic names continued up until the early 19th century in some rural areas. In the reign of Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
surnames became hereditary amongst the Welsh gentry
Welsh peers
This is an index of Welsh peers whose primary peerage, life peerage, and baronetcy titles includes a Welsh place-name origin or its territorial qualification is within the historic counties of Wales....
, and the custom spread slowly amongst commoners. Areas where English
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...
influence was strong abandoned patronymics earlier, as did town families and the wealthy.
New surnames retained the "ap" in a few cases, mainly in reduced form at the start of the surname, as in Upjohn (from ap John), Powell (from ap Hywel), and Bowen (from ab Owen). Alternatively, the ap was simply dropped entirely. The most common surnames in modern Wales result from adding an s to the end of the name, as in Jones, Roberts and Edwards. Patronymic surnames with the short -s form are recorded in various parts of England dating back to the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, and the Welsh practice was presumably in imitation of this. As most Welsh surnames, however, are derived from patronymics, and often based on a small set of first names, Welsh communities are full of families bearing the same surnames, but who are completely unrelated; it cannot be assumed that two people named Jones
Jones
Jones may refer to:* Jones , a common Anglo-Welsh surname* Jones , English cricketer in the 1740s* Jones calculus, a description of polarization in optics...
, even in the same village, must be related. The prevalence of names such as Jones and Williams brought a need for further distinction and in the 19th century a trend started for double surnames, created by prefixing the name of a house, parish or the mother's surname, as in "Cynddylan Jones". A hyphen was sometimes later introduced, for example "Nash-Williams".
Frequency of use
The stock of Welsh surnames is very small, which is partly attributable to the reduction in the variety of baptismal names after the Protestant ReformationProtestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
. The typically Welsh surnames Jones, Williams, Davies, Evans and Thomas were all found in the top ten surnames recorded in England and Wales in 2000. However, some of these names originated in England in the 14th century or earlier, long before they arose in Wales.
An analysis of the geography of Welsh surnames commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Government
Welsh Assembly Government
The Welsh Government is the devolved government of Wales. It is accountable to the National Assembly for Wales, the legislature which represents the interests of the people of Wales and makes laws for Wales...
found that 718,000 people in Wales, nearly 35% of the Welsh population, have a family name of Welsh origin, compared with 5.3% in the rest of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, 4.7% in 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...
, 4.1% 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...
, and 3.8% in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. A total of 16.3 million people in the countries studied had a name of Welsh origin.
Modern revival of patronymics
Although the vast majority of Welsh surnames are now family names as in the rest of the UK, there has been a limited revival of patronymics in modern Wales, especially among Welsh speakers. Alternatively, given surnames are used, as in the case of the folk singer and political figure Dafydd IwanDafydd Iwan
Dafydd Iwan , is a Welsh folk singer and politician. He was the president of Plaid Cymru .Dafydd Iwan Jones was born in Brynaman in Carmarthenshire, Wales, and is the elder brother of politician Alun Ffred Jones. He spent most of his youth in Bala in Gwynedd before attending the University of...
, opera singer Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel Jones CBE is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner....
and the late actress Myfanwy Talog
Myfanwy Talog
Myfanwy Talog was a Welsh actress, best known to the media as the long-term partner of Sir David Jason.-Personal life:...
.
External links
- The meaning behind Welsh names
- Welsh patronymic naming system
- Late Sixteenth Century Welsh Names
- What's in a name?
- Article on the relevance of surnames in genealogy (PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
File) - Welsh-Border Surnames from 'ab Edmond'