The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1906-06-15
THE NAMES OF WALES
FIVE DISTINCT WAYS BY WHICH
THEY HAVE BEEN ACQUIRED.

Take any casual list of Welshmen
and tick off Jones, Williams, Davis,
Evans, Thomas, Griffith, Morgan,
Llewellyn, Hughes, Roberts, Lewis and
Richards, and in some parts Of the
country especially you will practically
have exhausted the roll. In a column
of names now before the writer, drawn
from all parts Of the principally, there
are 600 names, and 81 of them are
Evanses, 40 Williamses, 20 Davises
and no fewer than 80 of them are
Joneses.
1t is commonly supposed that the
predominant Welsh names represent
in clans that are very ancient. The
Welsh are an old nation, and from
their geographical position they have
been very much isolated, and hence, it
is supposed, this tendency of certain
names in the course of long cen
turtles to multiply to the exclusion of
almost all others. This, however, as
regards the whole country, is quite err
rOneous. Until some six OF sever gen
erations ago the Welsh had no sur
names at all. AS is the use with most
primitive peoples, they knew each other
by one name only, and it was not until
intercourse between Welshmen and
Englishmen became greatly developed
in the sixteenth and the early part of
the seventeenth century that the Eng
lish use of q second name began to be
adopted by the more important Welsh
families.
There seems to be hardly q surname
in Wales traceable back beyond the
sixteenth century, but before the mid
die of the seventeenth all merchants,
professional people and the richer
classes generally had adopted the pa
tronymic. Where there are half a dOZ-
en- David Joneses in the same village
it is absolutely necessary to find some
appellations that will be distinctive be
tween them, and it is commonly done
in the ancient fashion. One will be
David Jones wyn-white David Jones,
that is-another will be David Jones
Ilwyd, or David Jones the gray man, or
David Jones Sais, signifying the man
who speaks English.
There are five distinct ways In which
Welsh names have been arrived at.
One class comprises names purely per-
sonal and native, such as Griffith or
Rhys Rees), or else imported from
England, such as Thomas or James.
Such are strictly individual designa-
lions, and from them SurnameS seem
to have been evolved by a custom IA
miliar to readers of the Old Testament.
Thus, Hugh ap David in the first in
stance means merely Hugh the son of
David, who may be David ap Thomas
Hugh the son of David the son of
Thomas. The conventional dropping
of the zap makes the individual Hugh
David, which looks like Il Christian and
surname, though they are really two
Christian names of two generations. a
second way in which eventually the
surname has been arrived at has been
by absorbing the zap" or "ab" into the
second name. Thus, Thomas ap Rich
ard becomes Thomas Pritchard and
Hugh alb Evan resolves into Hugh
Bevan. 4 third way is one already in
dicated, in which some personal charac-
teristic, such as white OF gray, thin or
stout. at first an individual nickname,
as it were, is handed down from father
to son and finally becomes the family
But it has been said that three-fOurthS
or four-fifths of modern Welsh names
have been reached by the adoption of
q custom from England at a time when
the Welsh craze for the fashionable
put invention on the stretch
and led to something like a regular
of production. Englishmen had
been accustomed to take as their sur
name the possessive case of the pa
ternal name. Thus Thomas, the son OF
Hob or Hick, became Thomas Hobs or
Hicks, and these finally became simply
Hobs and Hicks.
Now. the Welsh have no genitive
case. POSSESSION, OWlerSulp. Is iluICdt-
ed by the relative position of words, so
that they could not give exactly the
English possessive termination to their
names, and this stage was consequent
" omitted, and when, in the sixteenth
century, everybody of consequence
was feeling about for the dignity of a
surname. they adopted the English
practice of %appending the possessive
IS" without the apostrOphe, which they
did not understand. Thus Thomas ap
David. who had already become Thorn
David-which, by the position of the
words really meant David's son Thorn
as. exactly the same as Thomas ap
David-took the English 81 and be-
came Thomas Dayids, from which
finally emerged the name Of Davies or
David the pious Welsh of course got
the Bible, and it was a very IA
vorite name with them; hence the great
army of Welsh Davises. But a still