Welsh Surnames - Softcover

Welsh Surnames is the first full-scale study of Welsh surnames and is both a classification and a dictionary. Based on Welsh, Latin and English texts, on parish registers and local histories, it traces the growth of a Welsh surnaming pattern in Wales and the Border at the end of the Middle Ages. This historical picture is completed by evidence taken from modern sources such as electoral registers from Wales and western England, surnames from Welsh and London newspapers, and telephone directories. The book opens with a classification of the various kinds of Welsh surnames besides the innumerable examples of the well-known Welsh patronymic surname; surnames from hypocoristic forms, from anglicisations and approximations of Welsh names, from the forenames of women, from place-names, and many others. This is followed by a dictionary of Welsh surnames which also gives attention to variations and corruptions of the original names. Welsh Surnames is aimed both at the specialist and the general reader as an invaluable tool not only for the historian or the genealogist but also the geographer and sociologist.

T. J. Morgan, M.A., D.Litt., LL.D., is former Registrar of the University of Wales, and Emeritus Professor of Welsh, University College, Swansea. Author of Y Treigladau a'u Cystrawen, the standard work on initial mutations in Welsh, and many books of critical essays, he was at one time joint editor of the literary quarterly Y Llenor, chairman of Yr Academy Gymreig, and the first chairman of the literature committee of the Welsh Arts Council. He died in 1986. Prys Morgan, D.Phil. FRHistS, FSA, FLSW, DL, is the son of T. J. Morgan, and is Emeritus Professor of History at Swansea University. Among his books are The Eighteenth Century Renaissance and Iolo Morganwg, A Bible for Wales and The University of Wales 1939-1993. A member of many Welsh public bodies, such as the Welsh Arts Council and Cadw, he has been President of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion since 2006, and is a founding fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.