I recently had an interview with Radio Wales‘ “Good Evening Wales“. Following media interest in the migrations of some Welsh surnames such as “Jones”, BBC Wales wanted a little more information from our own World Names Profiler project. The project’s website allows visitors to type in their own surname and generate a map of it’s global distribution. You can also do an ethnicity search to simply map where Welsh names, for example, occur (see map below).
From the website you can find some interesting facts. For example, you are more likely to meet someone with a Welsh name in Chicago than London, and 6 out of the “top ten” regions with the most Welsh surnames (outside of Wales) occur beyond Europe. One of the most successful migrations (in terms of preserving the Welsh language and culture) was of course to Patagonia and this is shown by Argentina appearing in the top 10 most likely places to find many Welsh Surnames. So, although the main focus of yesterday’s interview was the movements of Welsh surnames within the UK, I think the global migrations we can track using Welsh surnames are far more interesting.
That said, to illustrate a little more the media interest in the Welsh surnames within the UK, I recommend people visit the National Trust Surname Profiler Website (link) that provides historical and contemporary maps of most surname distributions in the UK. The data behind this website have been the focus for much of my research and I have produced some maps related to Welsh names already. I have and included a couple with a little commentary below. If you would like to make your own you can visit the websites I mentioned above (Worldnames, National Trust).
The map above shows the % of the population with a Welsh surname (left) and an English surname (right). Darker brown means higher percentages and lighter colours represent lower percentages. You can see clearly how the more urban Southern Wales and the Welsh border have been infiltrated with English surnames.
I have featured the above map before on this blog. I have rescaled the UK so that the size of the area is proportional to the number of people with the Welsh surname “Lewis” that live there. As you can see from how much larger Wales has become you are still most likely to find the Lewis name in its country of origin.
Part of my research is related to defining cultural regions in Britain based on peoples’ surnames. These can be defined in a number of ways, but one of the most popular ways of culturally partitioning England is the North South Divide. My attention was therefore drawn to this video clip (“Prescott meets a ‘southern twit‘”) on the BBC website promoting the program “Prescott: The North South Divide “. I hoped the program would provide an insightful look at the differences between the North and the South of England by utilising John Prescott’s direct approach to questioning for which he is renowned. Instead much of the show was taken up with views (complete with associated commentary from Mrs Prescott) from the couple’s new flat in London and plentiful shots of John Prescott eating fish and chips. The latter were, ironically, interrupted with a feature on the relatively high increase in obesity prevalence amongst people living in the north of England.
Amongst the diversions, however, some important issues were raised that are worth highlighting. For example, the reported conclusions of the Cities Unlimited Report to stop investing in failing northern towns and encourage their populations to move south. Tim Leunig defends his report saying that if people in the north were to move to the south they would have a greater chance of well-paid employment. This may make economic sense but it fails to consider the many cultural and social implications of such migration. To some, such as Leunig, these considerations may be secondary to alleviating poverty, but they are contradicted by the many examples of people choosing to stay in a place they are familiar with in the full knowledge that it is detrimental to their prospects.
The program viewed the North South Divide as a 20th/ 21st Century phenomenon. Divisions have existed long before that, for example around 865 AD Danish raiders began to settle in Britain creating an area known as “Danelaw“. This created a North South divide in Britain as the raiders did not make it further south than the Thames, leaving south and south west England to the West Saxons. See below (source Wikipedia):
From this we could look beyond the rich/ poor basis for the the North South Divide and see it as a more entrenched cultural phenomenon that has persisted for a thousand years or more. This is certainly apparent if we look at place naming conventions and surnames where a clear transition occurs from south to north (northern places tend to have more Viking names containing “Thorpe”, “Borough” and “Wick” for example). You can see this for yourself by visiting the Institute for Name Studies Website and searching for “Thorpe”.
So, whilst Prescott’s program highlights genuine econmic differences and their associated impacts on health and life expectancy between the North and the South, especially amongst the poorest in society, he mixed these effects with underlying social differences (and prejudices see video clip) that probably developed over centuries. I think a focus on the latter would have made for a much more interesting, and insightful, documentary.
Below is the University of Sheffield’s detailed interpration of the North South Divide.
