Welsh people
The Welsh flag depicts the Welsh dragon (called Y Ddraig Goch, "the red dragon"), one of the most widely recognized Welsh national symbols and the national animal of Wales. It appears in the early legends of Merlin, and from them is taken to be the battle standard under which the Pendragons, Uther and Arthur rallied their troops. This symbol is said to derive from a tale of the Red Dragon of Wales defeating the White Dragon of England.
Wales also has use of another flag, the flag of Saint David. Although unofficially a national flag it is flown across the country every year to mark Saint David's Day and in 2002 was incorporated into Cardiff City Football Club's logo.
The leek is another national symbol and is worn every year on Saint David's Day. According to legend, St. David (the patron saint of Wales) ordered his troops to identify themselves by wearing the plant on their helmets during a battle against the Saxons. The daffodil is the national flower, symbolizing chivalry and respect in the language of flowers. The Narcissus obvallaris species only grows in the Tenby area of Wales
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Welsh emigration
Migration from Wales to the rest of Britain has been occurring throughout its history. Particularly during the Industrial Revolution hundreds of thousands of Welsh people migrated internally to the big cities of England and Scotland or to work in the coal mines of the north of England. As a result, much of the British population today have ancestry from Wales. The same can be said for the English, Scottish and Irish workers who migrated to Welsh cities such as Merthyr Tydfil or ports such as Pembroke in the Industrial Revolution. As a result, some English, Irish and Scottish have Welsh surnames ("Evans", "Jenkins" "Owen" etc.) and some Welsh have English, Scottish and Irish surnames - as a result, it is relatively rare in South Wales or English-speaking areas to find a person with exclusively Welsh ancestry.
Some thousands of Welsh settlers moved to other parts of Europe, but the number was sparse and concentrated to certain areas. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a small wave of contract miners from Wales arrived into Northern France, and the centre of Welsh-French populations are in coal mining towns of the French department Pas-de-Calais. Welsh settlers from Wales (and later Patagonian Welsh) arrived in Newfoundland, Canada in the early 1900s, many had founded towns in the province's Labrador coast region.
Internationally Welsh people have emigrated, in relatively small numbers (in proportion to population Irish emigration to the United States of America (USA) may have been 26 times greater than Welsh emigration),[37] to many countries, including the USA (in particular, Pennsylvania), Canada and Patagonia.[38][39][40] Malad City in Idaho, which began as a Welsh Mormon Settlement, lays claim to having more people of Welsh descent per capita than anywhere outside of Wales itself.[41] Malad's local High School is known as the "Malad Dragons" and flies the Welsh Flag as its school colours.[42] Welsh people have also settled as far as New Zealand and Australia.[43][37]
Around 1.75 million Americans report themselves to have Welsh ancestry, as did a further 467,000 in Canada's 2006 census.[5][6] This compares with 2.9 million people living in Wales (as of the 2001 census).[2]
There is no known evidence which would objectively support the legend that the Mandan, a Native American tribe of the central United States, are Welsh emigrants who reached North America under Prince Madog in 1170.[44]
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See also
- List of Welsh people
- Category:Welsh people
- 100 Welsh Heroes
- Culture of Wales
- Welsh literature
- Welsh poetry
- Music of Wales
- Welsh immigration
- Welsh settlement in Argentina's Chubut Valley, region of y Wladfa
- Welsh American
- Welsh Canadian
- Welsh-Australian
- Modern Celts
- National Assembly for Wales
- Anti-Welsh sentiment
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External links
- BBC Wales: Welsh Comings and Goings: The history of migration in and out of Wales
- BBC News report: The Numbers of Welsh (and Cornish)
- BBC News report: English and Welsh are races apart
- BBC News report: Genes link Celts to Basques
- BBC: The Welsh in Patagonia
- Glaniad - Welsh Settlements in Patagonia
- data-wales.co.uk: Emigration from Wales to America
- data-wales.co.uk: Why do so many Black Americans have Welsh names?
- Genetic data [12] and [13]
- Link2Wales: Encyclopedia of the alternative music scene in Wales
- A Y chromosome census of the British Isles, data from paper displayed on map of British Isles
- 418,000 write in 'Welsh' on 2001 Census form
- Gathering the Jewels - Welsh Heritage and Culture
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References
- ^ Not Available UK Census 2001 collected data on country of birth but not on self-selected ancestry or ethnic origin as with the US, Australian and Canadian censuses.
- ^ a b Estimated from population of Wales from 2001 census (2,903,085 Census 2001 Wales) with 89% of the population identifying as Welsh in 2001 (Devolution, Public Attitudes and National Identity)
- ^ City of Aberdeen: Census Stats and Facts.
- ^ Welsh people in England.
- ^ a b U.S. Census Bureau 2000 Census Fact Sheet.
- ^ a b [1] In the Canadian census of 2006, 27,115 people identified themselves as belonging only to the Welsh ethnic group, while an additional 413,855 included Welsh as one of multiple ethnic groups they claimed to belong to.
- ^ The 2001 New Zealand census reports 3,342 people stating they belong to the Welsh ethnic group. The 1996 census, which used a slightly different question[2], reported 9,966 people belonging to the Welsh ethnic group.
- ^ Government of Australia- ausstats.abs.gov.au.
- ^ BBC: Y Wladfa - The Welsh in Patagonia
- ^ Sacred Destinations Travel Guide.
- ^ John Davies (historian)Davies, John, A History of Wales, Penguin, 1994, Welshorigions pg 54, ISBN 0-14-01-4581-8]]
- ^ a b c d e f g UK ONS Welsh National Identity published 8 January 2004, extracted 7 April 2008
- ^ Cunliffe, B. Iron Age communities in Britainpp. 115-118
- ^ a b Iron Age Britain by Barry Cunliffe. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-8839-5.
- ^ Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland Before the Romans by Francis Pryor, pp. 121-122. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-00-712693-X.
- ^ a b Estimating the Impact of Prehistoric Admixture on the Genome of Europeans by Isabelle Dupanloup, Giorgio Bertorelle, Lounès Chikhi and Guido Barbujani (2004). Molecular Biology and Evolution: 21(7):1361-1372. Retrieved 10 July 2006.
- ^ del Giorgio, J.F. 2006. The Oldest Europeans. A.J. Place, ISBN 980-6898-00-1
- ^ What happened after the fall of the Roman Empire?: BBC Wales-History. Retrieved 3 October 2006.
- ^ Jarman, A.O.H. 1988. Y Gododdin: Britain's earliest heroic poem p. xviii
- ^ Davies, John, A History of Wales, published 1990 by Penguin, ISBN 0-14-014581-8
- ^ Davies, J. A history of Wales pp. 65-6
- ^ Williams, Ifor. 1972. The beginnings of Welsh poetry University of Wales Press. p. 71
- ^ Williams, Gwyn A., The Welsh in their History, published 1982 by Croom Helm, ISBN 0-7099-3651-6
- ^ Davies, John, A History of Wales, published 1990 by Penguin, ISBN 0-14-014581-8
- ^ The Flemish colonists in Wales: BBC website. Retrieved 17 August 2006.
- ^ 200 years of the Census in...WALES Office for National Statistics
- ^ Industrial Revolution BBC The Story of the Welsh
- ^ Population therhondda.co.uk. Retrieved 9 May 2006
- ^ a b Census shows Welsh language rise Friday, 14 February, 2003 extracted 12-04-07
- ^ a b c Census equality backed by Plaid 23 September, 2000 extracted 12-04-07
- ^ Census results 'defy tick-box row' 30 September, 2002 extracted 12-04-07
- ^ Scottish Parliament's Review of Census Ethnicity Classifications Consultation: June 2005 extrated April 7, 2008
- ^ Census shows Welsh language rise Friday, 14 February, 2003 extracted 12-04-07
- ^ a b c NSO Artical: 'Welsh' on Census form published 8 January 2004, extracted 7 April 2008
- ^ UK: Wales Plaid calls for second home controls, BBC Wales, November 17, 1999
- ^ Plaid plan 'protects' rural areas, BBC Wales, 19 June, 2001
- ^ a b Nineteenth Century Arrivals in Australia: University of Wales, Lampeter website. Retrieved 3 August 2006.
- ^ Welsh in Pennsylvania by Matthew S. Magda (1986), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. From Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Retrieved 3 August 2006.
- ^ WELSH: Multicultural Canada. Retrieved 3 August 2006.
- ^ South America - Patagonia: BBC - Wales History. Retrieved 3 August 2006.
- ^ Tiny US town's big Welsh heritage: BBC News, 20 July 2005. Retrieved 3 August 2006.
- ^ WELSH HISTORY, The Welsh in North America, Utah: Welsh Society of Central Ohio. Retrieved 3 August 2006.
- ^ Welsh immigration from [Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand]. Retrieved 3 August 2003.
- ^ Adams, Cecil (2006). Straight Dope: Was there an Indian tribe descended from Welsh explorers to America?.
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Further reading
- John Davies, A History of Wales, published 1990 by Penguin, ISBN 0-14-014581-8
- Norman Davies, The Isles, published 1991 by Papermac, ISBN 0-333-69283-7
- Gwyn A Williams, The Welsh in their History, published 1982 by Croom Helm, ISBN 0-7099-3651-6
- J.F. del Giorgio, The Oldest Europeans, published 2005 by A.J. Place, ISBN 980-6898-00-1
- Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism, published in 1997 by Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521625440
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