From the subsidy rolls of 1292, everyone has a surname. In comparison, among the English, the tradition of surnames was well established by the 13th century. It’s a strange progression to go from religious reformation to everyone in Wales having the last name ‘Evans’!īy contrast, there was a much greater variety of names in Wales in the thirteenth century and earlier. This page details how the reformation took hold in Wales on a larger scale than in Ireland and other regions of the UK. Martin Luther posted his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ in 1517. Sometimes a long time after: “In 1292, 48 per cent of Welsh names were patronymics, and in some parishes over 70 per cent …” The key is to understanding Welsh names is that “the stock of Welsh surnames is very small … attributable to the reduction in the variety of baptismal names after the Protestant Reformation.” In Wales, this process didn’t begin until after the Norman conquest of 1282. By 1400 most English families, and those from Lowland Scotland, had adopted the use of hereditary surnames.” So trades, nicknames, places of origin, and fathers’ names became fixed surnames -names such as Fletcher and Smith, Redhead and Swift, Green and Pickering, Wilkins and Johnson. Initially, the identifying names were changed or dropped at will, but eventually they began to stick and to get passed on. Over time many names became corrupted and their original meaning is now not easily seen.Īfter 1066, the Norman barons introduced surnames into England, and the practice gradually spread. When communities were small each person was identifiable by a single name, but as the population increased, it gradually became necessary to identify people further – leading to names such as John the butcher, William the short, Henry from Sutton, Mary of the wood, Roger son of Richard. “Before the Norman Conquest of Britain, people did not have hereditary surnames: they were known just by a personal name or nickname. In England, this transition occurred soon after the Norman conquest of 1066. The answer lies in the moment that the Welsh switched from the patronymic system of names (Sarah ferch Ronald Carew ap Daniel) where a child’s name contained a first name, then ‘son of’ or ‘daughter of’, and then their father’s name, to a system where everyone in the family had the same surname. Why is that? Why don’t the Welsh have the huge variety of surnames like the English do? Among English speakers, these last names are clearly derived from first names. It is a standing joke among people who know Wales that there are only a handful of Welsh surnames (last names), consisting primarily of Jones, Evans, Roberts, Thomas, Williams, and Davies.
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