The Old Welsh Patronymic Naming System

[rmstevens2]

The graphic below illustrates how the old Welsh patronymic naming system worked, which shows how a bunch of people of Welsh ancestry can share the same ancestor and yet have different surnames. The gentry began adopting permanent surnames in the 18th century. The common folk did so about a hundred years later. Moving to North America led to the adoption of permanent surnames even earlier, as the old system was more difficult to maintain here.

Originally, each son took his father's first name as a surname along with the prefix ap for "son of". That was modified to ab when the first name began with a vowel, as in ab Owen (Bowen - son of Owen). Later, names like "ap Stephen" became Stephens, "ap John" became Jones, etc. Ap and ab were derived from the older forms Map and Mab. They are the P-Celtic versions of the very recognizable Q-Celtic Mac, for "son of".

Daughters also used their fathers' first names, but with the prefix ferch for "daughter of".

The graphic illustrates the hypothetical example of a man named John Evans who had five sons, each of whom had four sons of his own.

If your ancestry is Welsh and you have a bunch of close Y-DNA matches to men with different Welsh surnames, don't jump to the conclusion that there were multiple NPEs at play. Probably you are just a victim of the old Welsh patronymic naming system.                                                                                                                                                     
 

[Rufus191]

Thanks for this. I have had some knowledge of this for a while. I think gentry and aristocracy may have adopted surnames at a slightly earlier point than the 18the century? After all we have the Tudors, and they fixed a surname from the 15th century on.

[szin]

Thanks for this. I have had some knowledge of this for a while. I think gentry and aristocracy may have adopted surnames at a slightly earlier point than the 18the century? After all we have the Tudors, and they fixed a surname from the 15th century on.

From what I can see, some of the gentry of Norman descent used their French toponymic surnames as early as the twelfth century. The earliest Welsh-speaking gentry to adopt surnames were almost all of mixed origin so it's likely that they were influenced in this regard by the Norman current. Sir Ralph II Maelog of Newport, a descendant of the kings of Deheubarth and Powys, took his title (maelog, meaning prince) as a surname in the early thirteenth century. His maternal grandmother Mabel FitzWilliam was Cambro-Norman (in fact, a direct paternal line descendant of William the Conqueror).

[rmstevens2]

An example of how the old Welsh patronymic naming system can confuse things recently occurred in the R1b-BY168 and Subclades Project, which I administer. A man named Jones got the first round of his Big Y-700 results a week or so ago. His terminal SNP at that point was BY87004, which put him in the same category on our web site as another man named Jones and a third man named Samuel. Then, as often happens with Big Y-700 results, within a couple of days this new member's terminal SNP advanced, in this case from BY87004 to Y103913. The other individual in the BY87004 category with the surname Jones did not advance to Y193013, despite the shared surname, but the man with the surname Samuel did.

Surprise!