In a message dated 25/01/2004 11:53:09 GMT Standard Time,
jopaw(a)paradise.net.nz writes:
Can someone please ecplain this to me. I have not come across it
before. it
seems to be affevting my Jone Jones or is she Hughes?
-Audrey
Patronymic naming systems involve the first name of a father being used as
the last name of a child.
In its traditional Welsh form this involved using the conjunction ap or ab
(meaning son) for boys or erch / erx / ach (daughter) for girls. Thus if Thomas
had two children they might be called William ap Thomas and Mair erch Thomas.
Because Welsh names are made to look like Latin or English in official
records the conjunctions are often contracted into the father's names to give names
such as Pugh (ap Hugh) Bowen (ab Owen) and Prichard (ap Richard). If you find
a child with a second name beginning with P or B in a Welsh document it is
always worth looking for a father who's first name is similar but with the p or b
dropped.
The most common patronymic form found in Welsh documents is the most
difficult to spot, because it ignores the Welsh conjunctions all together, and the
father's name is turned into an English sounding surname. So the child of William
Thomas might be called John Williams, who's son may be David Jones the father
of Anne Davies.
Because the change from Patronymics to Surnames was a gradual process it is
difficult to know if we should be looking for a Surname or a Patronymic. One
way of attempting to find out is to look at infant deaths in the parish
registers during the timespan that the event we need should be recorded.
If you are looking for the christening of Edward Morris about 1794, but you
are unsure if you should be looking for Edward the son of Xxxx Morris or Edward
the son of Maurice Xxxx, look for an entry in the burial records that says
something like "Mary Lewis, infant", then compare with the baptismal records for
the same year. If Mary's baptism is recorded as Mary the daughter of Lewis
ROBERTS, then this register is using patronymics during this period. If,
however, the baptism records a baptism of Mary the daughter of Robert LEWIS then the
register has adopted surnames.
It is important to realise that the names used in official documents are an
attempt by the writer of those documents to convey a person's name in the
language of the document. When we see a name such as "Iohis fil Iacobi" in old
Latin parish registers we know that this is not the name used by the person, but
an attempt to translate the name into Latin. In England, when parish registers
came to be whiten in English then the person's "real" name would be used,
but
in Wales the change to English registers meant that instead of being
translated into Latin names were translated into English.
The problem with this is that names might be translated into different
documents, or into similar documents by different people in different ways. So Ann
the daughter of Gwilym Gruffydd may be recorded as Anne Williams in a parish
register, but as Anne Griffiths on a census register.
All this sounds very complicated, but the reality isn't as complicated as the
explanation, most family historians with Welsh ancestors soon get a "feel"
for it and searching for ancestors with using patronymics becomes as natural as
searching for surnamed ancestors.
All the best
Alwyn