Welsh Journals

example, supporting the North in the Civil War), God-fearing committed to scholarship and the arts, and in their own eyes at least ambitious and thrusting. A constant theme in the Welsh-Americar literature is the more than proportional contribution made by tht Welsh in the development of the republic (for example, Penn, 1899 For a classified bibliography see Hartmann, 1967). The lists o "eminent" Welsh-Americans are long, if not invariably accurate The Welsh were, like their idealized stereotype, little but good. There is some substance in this view, particularly in respect o 19th. Century migration. But it ignores both the volume and wide spread distribution of the earlier waves of Welsh emigrants, many o whom would have travelled as individuals (and left no written record and yet were likely to have composed a far higher proportion of tota migrants than their better documented successors (Dodd, 1957). Th< influence of these earlier migrants and their progeny in forming th< basic population stock of the United states appears often to have beei underestimated. It is for this reason that one piece of evidence, tha of present-day American surnames, is distinctly at variance with th< conventional view of the Welsh in the United States. If it is acceptec that certain of these surnames (Williams, Jones, Davies, etc.) are broadly of Welsh origin, then some interesting results emerge. Welsh surnames the inconsistencies An observant visitor to the United States is immediately struck botl by the frequency and by the ubiquity of common Welsh surnames The distribution is such that it raises some important problems Three sample pieces of evidence will suffice to illustrate the point. In 1964, the United States Department of Health, Education an Welfare, Social Security Administration undertook a count of the sut names held in its social security computer and ranked them in des cending order (Smith, 1969). There is no reason to suppose that th considerable sample on file (over 150 million names) was atypical Though there are some problems in interpreting the list, it provides fascinating view of the distribution of American surnames. Smith i easily the most common, followed by Johnson, but then in third plac is Williams, in fifth Jones, in seventh Davis (Davies), followed closel by Thomas (12th.), Harris (16th.), Lewis (19th.), Roberts (34th. Evans (39th.), Edwards (45th.), and Morris (46th.). There are sixteé distinctly Welsh names in the top 100. In the top 50 there is only on non-British name, Rodriquez in 44th. position, and there are onl five non-British names in the top 100, all of Spanish origin. The su½ prisingly low frequency of German surnames is probably due 1 acculturation, partly from choice but partly a result of the work c sometimes uneducated and often unsympathetic immigration offii ials. Thus Schmidt became Smith, Bloch became Block or Blacl Albrecht became Albert, and so on (Dohan, 1974).