Calling all Welshmen and descendants!

[peteanddelmar]

My families name sounds and looks Anglo to me. There's a town in modern England.

But according to an UK website the whole town and countryside is named with Welsh words. According to this site the town's people may have been Welsh and later Anglicized...?

Somerset? There is some certainty that is started as a Welsh village and was later taken over by English.
Was Somerset ever Welsh?

Some are saying our name was originally Welsh.

There is Roman pavement. Creech Hill. (Welsh?)

I am like the sergeant on Hogan's Heroes.
I know nothink. really.

 

[alexjack]

Well Somerset is now a county in the south west of England. Thing is I think what happened hundreds of years ago was that the Celtic people lived in all of the British Isles from east to west, north and south but people like the Saxons came here and drove the Celts into the west where the influence of the Celtic languages can still be seen in place names etc. In Wales where the language is still used today, words like 'Tref' meaning 'town' are used in place names like Tredegar, Treharris and Tremorfa and you see places in the far south west of England, in Cornwall with 'Tre' used a lot as well. Also many Celtic language words have gotten Anglicised over the years. The river Avon that Bristol stands on is probably an example, the Welsh for 'river' is 'afan' pronounced avan. Maybe it's like Texas or New Mexico/Arizona where, being on borders people from both sides combine their cultures and languages, places like Santa Fe and El Paso although in the US have Spanish names. I hope that explains things a bit and if anything I said isn't quite right I apologise but that's how I understand the situation.

 

[peteanddelmar]

Well Somerset is now a county in the south west of England. Thing is I think what happened hundreds of years ago was that the Celtic people lived in all of the British Isles from east to west, north and south but people like the Saxons came here and drove the Celts into the west where the influence of the Celtic languages can still be seen in place names etc. In Wales where the language is still used today, words like 'Tref' meaning 'town' are used in place names like Tredegar, Treharris and Tremorfa and you see places in the far south west of England, in Cornwall with 'Tre' used a lot as well. Also many Celtic language words have gotten Anglicised over the years. The river Avon that Bristol stands on is probably an example, the Welsh for 'river' is 'afan' pronounced avan. Maybe it's like Texas or New Mexico/Arizona where, being on borders people from both sides combine their cultures and languages, places like Santa Fe and El Paso although in the US have Spanish names. I hope that explains things a bit and if anything I said isn't quite right I apologise but that's how I understand the situation.

Thanks for your time. Our family was always told, you are English. But when you jump the pond and look about on the internet in Europe...their are multiple opinions and facts.

 

[Allie]

Alex is right of course - if you go back to the right point in history, what is now England was all Celtic. But that isn't to say they were Welsh.

Looking up Somerset it seems that most of the place names are Saxon, some are Brythonic Celtic, and some are Roman. If your people are from Somerset I think most people would agree you can say they were English, whatever the derivation of the name.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Somerset wasn't Welsh in the sense of being in Wales; however, there are links. The -wall in Cornwall (farther west from Somerset) is linguistically related to the term "Wales;" both mean, essentially, "foreigner" (from the Saxon point of view). The original Cornish culture was related to the Welsh, both outgrowths of the Brythonic/Celtic culture of Britain prior to the arrival of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. These peoples, in moving into what became England, forced the older culture into the outer "nooks and crannies" of the island, such as modern Wales and Cornwall. (Doubtless many of the actual individuals were absorbed into the new culture by trade, intermarriage, etc., though there was also some displacement of people. But the incoming culture pushed out the older culture.)

And there was certainly trade back and forth across the Severn estuary; Bristol and Somerset had frequent communication with southeast Wales, and no doubt there was at least some movement of people back and forth.

(Pardon the mini-lecture... I've recently finished reading volumes 1 and 2 of the Gwent County History, Gwent being the older name of what's pretty much Monmouthshire today, just across the Severn from Somerset...)

 

[AndyHall]

I have Welsh ancestry, but that's a part of the tree not explored in a lot of detail.

Expired Image Removed

Some years back, however, I did have the opportunity to visit a north Wales market town, where I met someone on a Saturday morning regarding a prospective history project. He took us into a little High Street cafe that had probably been there for two hundred years, at least. It was a tiny place, with maybe ten tables, and jammed full of people, all locals.

Every one of them was speaking Welsh. Every. Single. One.

It was neat to see the resurgence of spoken Welsh at first hand, because I understand it was considered a dying language for many years. It certainly isn't now.*

_________
* Welsh may not be dying, but it could still use a transfusion of a few vowels. Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, really?

 

[peteanddelmar]

Somerset wasn't Welsh in the sense of being in Wales; however, there are links. The -wall in Cornwall (farther west from Somerset) is linguistically related to the term "Wales;" both mean, essentially, "foreigner" (from the Saxon point of view). The original Cornish culture was related to the Welsh, both outgrowths of the Brythonic/Celtic culture of Britain prior to the arrival of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. These peoples, in moving into what became England, forced the older culture into the outer "nooks and crannies" of the island, such as modern Wales and Cornwall. (Doubtless many of the actual individuals were absorbed into the new culture by trade, intermarriage, etc., though there was also some displacement of people. But the incoming culture pushed out the older culture.)

And there was certainly trade back and forth across the Severn estuary; Bristol and Somerset had frequent communication with southeast Wales, and no doubt there was at least some movement of people back and forth.

(Pardon the mini-lecture... I've recently finished reading volumes 1 and 2 of the Gwent County History, Gwent being the older name of what's pretty much Monmouthshire today, just across the Severn from Somerset...)

Ok. History major? Or how do you plow through that kind of stuff with all that Welsh spelling? If I see a Welsh history written in modern English I still give up. They need substitute words for names like Bob, Joe, and John. You must be even more of a reader than me.
I WAS A speed reader and my pace went waaaaay up, but my comprehension plummeted! LOL

 

[peteanddelmar]

I have Welsh ancestry, but that's a part of the tree not explored in a lot of detail.

Expired Image Removed

Some years back, however, I did have the opportunity to visit a north Wales market town, where I met someone on a Saturday morning regarding a prospective history project. He took us into a little High Street cafe that had probably been there for two hundred years, at least. It was a tiny place, with maybe ten tables, and jammed full of people, all locals.

Every one of them was speaking Welsh. Every. Single. One.

It was neat to see the resurgence of spoken Welsh at first hand, because I understand it was considered a dying language for many years. It certainly isn't now.*

Wow. As always a great pic. That had to be fun. Yes, Wales could use a infusion of vowels! I have read a tiny bit of Wales history and always give up when the use of Welsh words come too often!

_________
* Welsh may not be dying, but it could still use a transfusion of a few vowels. Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, really?

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Ok. History major? Or how do you plow through that kind of stuff with all that Welsh spelling? If I see a Welsh history written in modern English I still give up. They need substitute words for names like Bob, Joe, and John. You must be even more of a reader than me.
I WAS A speed reader and my pace went waaaaay up, but my comprehension plummeted! LOL

Actually, I was a business major... but I've always had a thing for history.

 

[alexjack]

I assumed you were a professional in some history sphere Mark. I always enjoy your posts.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I assumed you were a professional in some history sphere Mark. I always enjoy your posts.

Danke! It's hard to make money in the "history biz..." it's my avocation, rather than my vocation!

 

[Reb]

I wouldn't know. My English family came from Lancashire/Yorkshire. Northumbria Specifically the hundred of Amounderness, near present day Preston.

 

[hrobalabama]

I am a Roberts of the Welsh line. My hero was Evan Roberts.

 

[Greg Taylor]

My g-g grandfather, Adj. William Beynon Phillips of the Second Pennsylvania Provisional Heavy Artillery was born in 1841 in Maestege, a small village in the county of Glamorganshire in South Wales, not far from the present day city of Port Talbot. For reasons that we'll never understand, William left his mother land in 1861 to begin a new life with other Welsh immigrants who had previously settled in the Lackawanna River valley of eastern Pennsylvania. His new home was established in the hillside village of Hyde Park, overlooking the city of Scranton, where he found many former emigrants from Wales. Barely a year after arriving in America he enlisted in the Union army along with many of his Welsh mates and joined the fight to preserve his newly adopted country. His story can be read at: https://wbp2ndpaha.wordpress.com/about-william-b-phillips/

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Hm. I thought I'd mentioned this in this thread-- perhaps it was somewhere else. Apologies in advance for a possible re-run...

According to my research, my family name originated with a Jenkin ap Adam (Welsh spelling Siencyn ap Adam... the "ap" is "son of") who appears to have been born at Wernddu just east of Abergavenny in what's now Monmouthshire, southeast Wales ca. 1302, and who held the position of Master Sergeant of Abergavenny. Jenkin's ancestors included Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), an early Welsh ruler noted for his law code. One branch of his descendants (not my branch) became one of the lines of the Earls of Pembroke. (This branch caused me some genealogical confusion, as they seem to have rewritten their family history to 'select' some more illustrious ancestors, going right back to Charlemagne...)

If this is correct, Jenkin was my 21st great-grandfather.