What's the original Welsh spelling of the surname "Jones" (if there is one)?

Question

Just "Jones" doesn't look very Welsh. And I didn't think the letter J existed in native Welsh words.

Answer 1

No, J doesn't exist in native Welsh words. I'll explain a bit of the background to Welsh surnames:

Originally, as in many cultures even today, Welsh people didn't have surnames in our sense at all. You'd just use a given name and, if you needed to be specific, you might add a nickname (like Gwyn, which means white). More commonly, however, you'd give the name of their father, after ap or ab (short for mab, which means son [of]), and you could go on listing forefathers until you were specific enough, or had forgotten who they were. If you were a woman, you'd use merch (girl [of]) - though I forget whether the name of the mother or father was used. Nowadays it's normally the mother. I'm told 'ach' was also used instead of 'merch'.

For example, I would be Gareth ap Ian ap Iorwerth, and my sister would be Branwen ap Sian ap Jean. Some Welsh people today still use this system, and nicknames based on where you live or the way you look or something like that are still very common. I knew boys in school called Gethin ap John and Lewis ap Iorwerth, and a girl called Bethan merch Rose. There was also a Martin Bryn Du (the name of his farm), and lots of other similar examples. It's also quite common now for Welsh people to use a second given name: so Dafydd Iwan's brother is called Alwyn Ffred.

Anyway, at some point after the Norman conquest, various pressures acted to make Welsh people take on English-style surnames. People ordinarily known by a nickname made this their surname, hence names like Lloyd, Floyd (both from Llwyd, meaning grey) and Gwyn today. More often, people would use their father's name, and this mainly happened in three ways. The simplest way was just to use the father's name on its own: as in Rees or Rice, from Welsh Rhys. Alternatively, ab Owain, ap Hywel, ap Rhys etc might become Bowen, Powell or Price. Third, the father's name might be used with -(e)s added, to mimic English names. So Owain ap Robert might become Owain Robert, Owain Probert, or Owain Roberts.

Now, you'll have noticed that a lot of these names became anglicised in spelling too, and the Welsh name was often "translated" into English to make the surname. So Sion (pronounced like Sean) and Ioan were translated to John or Jon, and the -es was added to that.

Answer 2

surname originally Johnson or John son