Lewis
Llywelyn anglicised — a princely name carried into common use across the Marches and the south.
Draft entry · awaiting community review
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Lewis
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Lewis.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
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Stake your name →What does the Lewis name mean?
From the Welsh Llywelyn, Anglicised as Lewis from the late medieval period. Llywelyn was the great princely name of the House of Aberffraw — Llywelyn the Great (d.1240) and Llywelyn the Last (d.1282) — and the form Lewis carried its prestige into a Tudor administrative orthography that lacked any glyph for the Welsh 'll' and that, after the Acts of Union of 1536, was actively compressing Welsh names into English forms in record-keeping and law. The English Lewis (from Frankish Hludwig, Louis) reinforced the surname from the Marcher side.
The history of Lewis
Lewis is one of the most common Welsh surnames in mid- and south-east Wales — Powys, Monmouthshire and Glamorgan in particular. The surname is overwhelmingly from the Welsh Llywelyn line; only a small minority of bearers descend from the Frankish-route Lewis brought to England by the Normans.
Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1806–1863) was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Palmerston; Saunders Lewis (1893–1985), the Liverpool-Welsh playwright, was one of the founders of Plaid Cymru and the author of Tynged yr Iaith ('The Fate of the Language'), the 1962 radio lecture that triggered the formation of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg and the modern Welsh-language movement.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), the Belfast-born author of the Narnia books, was descended on his father's side from a Welsh Lewis line — the Lewises of Carmarthenshire — that had emigrated to Cork in the 18th century.
Notable bearers of the Lewis name
- Saunders Lewis (1893–1985) — playwright, founding figure of Plaid Cymru
- C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) — author (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters)
- Sir George Cornewall Lewis (1806–1863) — Chancellor of the Exchequer
Frequently asked
What does the surname Lewis mean?
Where does the Lewis family come from?
Who are some famous Lewises?
Neighbouring clans
- EvansSon of John, by the Welsh road — the cousin name of Jones.
- OwenThe princely name — Owain in Welsh, the surname of the last revolt and the first Tudor.
- LloydLlwyd — the grey one — the great descriptive surname of the central Welsh ridge.
- Powellap Hywel — the contracted patronymic that descends from Hywel Dda, the king who wrote Welsh law.