Cymru
Wales
The land of the cantref and the commote — a kingdom of patronymics, where Owain Glyndŵr was the last to be called Prince of Wales by his own people.
- Families
- 22
- Tiles
- 17
- Regions
- 5
The kingdoms of the Welsh, mapped.
Primer
How the Welsh patronymic system works
Wales kept the patronymic — ‘son of’ — for longer than almost anywhere else in western Europe. A man was Dafydd ap Hywel ap Gruffudd, David son of Hywel son of Gruffudd, and his son in turn would be Owain ap Dafydd. The name reset every generation.
Under the Tudors and the Acts of Union the system was compressed into fixed surnames. ap Hywel became Powell, ap Rhys became Price, ap Robert became Probert. Where the patronymic took its father's English-form first name as the surname, you get the great Welsh genitive surnames — son of John Jones, son of William Williams, son of David Davies. Together those three names cover roughly an eighth of the Welsh population.
The princely houses are a separate story. The Royal House of Aberffraw ruled Gwynedd for four centuries until the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd at Cilmeri in 1282. Owain Glyndŵr's revolt of 1400–1415 was the last attempt to re-found a native principality. Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth in 1485 was the inversion — a Welshman taking the English crown — and the last shape Welsh sovereignty took for five hundred years.
The kingdoms — Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth, Morgannwg and Gwent — predate them all. Their borders shaped the Welsh language dialects, the church dioceses, and the family networks that this atlas is organised around.
Browse
By kingdom
Gwynedd
3 tilesThe princely heartland — Anglesey, Snowdonia and Aberconwy. The seat of the House of Aberffraw and of Llywelyn the Great's line.
Powys
4 tilesThe middle kingdom — Powys Wenwynwyn and Powys Fadog, stretching from the Severn headwaters east into the marches of Cheshire and Shropshire.
Deheubarth
3 tilesThe south-western kingdom of Lord Rhys — Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, with Dinefwr Castle at its political heart.
Morgannwg
4 tilesGlamorgan — Cardiff, the Vale, the iron and coal valleys and the Gower coast. The most populous of the historic kingdoms.
Gwent
3 tilesThe eastern kingdom — Monmouthshire and the Wye, Caerleon of the legions, and the Marcher lordships that pressed deepest into Welsh ground.
Standard-bearers
Names you may know
Jones
Son of John — and roughly one in twenty Welsh-descended people in the world.
Williams
Son of William — second only to Jones in Welsh density, and first in the north.
Davies
Son of David — born of the patron saint's name and densest in his own corner of Wales.
House of Tudor
“Beth bynnag a fynno Duw, a fydd”
Welsh in origin, English in destiny — the line that took the throne at Bosworth.
Glyndŵr
The last native-born Prince of Wales — and the longest revolt the Welsh would ever raise.
Owen
The princely name — Owain in Welsh, the surname of the last revolt and the first Tudor.
Lloyd
Llwyd — the grey one — the great descriptive surname of the central Welsh ridge.
Powell
ap Hywel — the contracted patronymic that descends from Hywel Dda, the king who wrote Welsh law.
Morgan
The name that named a kingdom — Morgannwg's enduring patronym.