The Welsh (Welsh: Cymry) are a Celtic^[13][14] nation and ethnic group native to, or otherwise associated with, Wales, Welsh culture, Welsh history and the Welsh language. Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, and the majority of people living in Wales are British citizens.^[15]

The language, which falls within the Insular Celtic family, has historically been spoken throughout Wales, with its predecessor Common Brittonic once spoken throughout most of the island of Great Britain. Prior to the 20th century, large numbers of Welsh people spoke only Welsh, with little or no fluent knowledge of English.^[16] Welsh remains the predominant language in parts of Wales, particularly in North Wales and West Wales. English is the predominant language in South Wales. Many Welsh people, even in predominately English-speaking areas of Wales, are fluent or semi-fluent in Welsh or, to varying degrees, capable of speaking or understanding Welsh at limited or conversational proficiency levels. Although the Welsh language and its ancestors have been spoken in what is now Wales since well before the Roman incursions into Britain, historian John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the end of Roman rule in Britain.^[17] The term "Welsh people" applies to people from Wales and people of Welsh ancestry perceiving themselves or being perceived as sharing a cultural heritage and shared ancestral origins.^[18]

In 2016, an analysis of the geography of Welsh surnames commissioned by the Welsh Government found that 718,000 people (nearly 35% of the Welsh population) have a family name of Welsh origin, compared with 5.3% in the rest of the United Kingdom, 4.7% in New Zealand, 4.1% in Australia, and 3.8% in the United States, with an estimated 16.3 million people in the countries studied having at least partial Welsh ancestry.^[1] Over 300,000 Welsh people live in London alone.^[19]

The names "Wales" and "Welsh" are traced to the Proto-Germanic word "Walhaz" meaning "foreigner", "stranger", "Roman", "Romance-speaker", or "Celtic-speaker" which was used by the ancient Germanic peoples to describe inhabitants of the former Roman Empire, who were largely romanised and spoke Latin or Celtic languages.^[20] The same etymological origin is shared by the names of various other Celtic or Latin peoples such as the Walloons and the Vlachs, as well as of the Swiss canton of Valais. The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words (both of which are pronounced [ˈkəm.rɨ]) are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning "fellow-countrymen".^[21][22]

Thus, they carry a sense of "land of fellow-countrymen", "our country", and notions of fraternity. The use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the post-Roman Era relationship of the Welsh with the Brythonic-speaking peoples of northern England and southern Scotland, the peoples of "Yr Hen Ogledd" (English: The Old North).^[23] The word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century.^[24] It is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan (Moliant Cadwallon,^[25] by Afan Ferddig) c. 633.^[26]

In Welsh literature, the word Cymry was used throughout the Middle Ages to describe the Welsh, though the older, more generic term Brythoniaid continued to be used to describe any of the Britonnic peoples, including the Welsh, and was the more common literary term until c. 1100. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh. Until c. 1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland.^[22]

During their time in Britain, the ancient Romans encountered tribes in present-day Wales that they called the Ordovices, the Demetae, the Silures and the Deceangli.^[27] The people of what is now Wales were not distinguished from the rest of the peoples of southern Britain; all were called Britons and spoke the common British language, a Brythonic Celtic tongue.^[28] Celtic language and culture seems to have arrived in Britain during the Iron Age, though some archaeologists argue that there is no evidence for large-scale Iron Age migrations into Great Britain.^[29] The claim has also been made that Indo-European languages may have been introduced to the British Isles as early as the early Neolithic (or even earlier), with Goidelic and Brythonic languages developing indigenously.^[29][30] Others hold that the close similarity between the Goidelic and Brythonic branches, and their sharing of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age terminology with their continental relatives, point to a more recent introduction of Indo-European languages (or close communication), with Proto-Celtic itself unlikely to have existed before the end of the 2nd millennium BC at the earliest.^[31] The genetic evidence in this case would show that the change to Celtic languages in Britain may have occurred as a cultural shift rather than through migration as was previously supposed.

Some current genetic research supports the idea that people living in the British Isles are likely mainly descended from the indigenous European Paleolithic (Old Stone Age hunter gatherers) population (about 80%), with a smaller Neolithic (New Stone Age farmers) input (about 20%).^[32] Paleolithic Europeans seem to have been a homogeneous population, possibly due to a population bottleneck (or near-extinction event) on the Iberian peninsula, where a small human population is thought to have survived the glaciation, and expanded into Europe during the Mesolithic. The assumed genetic imprint of Neolithic incomers is seen as a cline, with stronger Neolithic representation in the east of Europe and stronger Paleolithic representation in the west of Europe.^[32][33] Most in Wales today regard themselves as modern Celts, claiming a heritage back to the Iron Age tribes, which themselves, based on modern genetic analysis, would appear to have had a predominantly Paleolithic and Neolithic indigenous ancestry. When the Roman legions departed Britain around 400, a Romano-British culture remained in the areas the Romans had settled, and the pre-Roman cultures in others.^[34]

In two recently published books, Blood of the Isles, by Brian Sykes and The Origins of the British, by Stephen Oppenheimer, both authors state that according to genetic evidence, most Welsh people, like most Britons, descend from the Iberian Peninsula in Southwest Europe, as a result of different migrations that took place during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic eras, and which laid the foundations for the present-day populations in the British Isles, indicating an ancient relationship among the populations of Atlantic Europe.^[35][36][37] According to Stephen Oppenheimer 96% of lineages in Llangefni in north Wales derive from Iberia. Genetic research on the Y-chromosome has shown that the Welsh, like the Irish, share a large proportion of their ancestry with the Basques of Northern Spain and South Western France, although the Welsh have a greater presumed Neolithic input than both the Irish and the Basques.^[38] Genetic marker R1b averages from 83–89% amongst the Welsh.^[38][39]

DNA research conducted by CymruDNA Wales has shown that a percentage of Welshmen living today are descended from ancient Kings and Princes of Wales, the quintessential DNA signature R-L371 aka S300 snp downstream from R1b-L21 (S145) is believed to have originated in North Wales around 1000 AD.^{[40][41][42][43]} Recent DNA evidence suggests that Welsh people descended specifically from middle eastern DNA carriers, an idea previously proposed at least as early as the 19th century, in History of the Welsh Baptist by Jonathan Davis.^[44]

The people in what is now Wales continued to speak Brythonic languages with additions from Latin, as did some other Celts in areas of Great Britain. The surviving poem Y Gododdin is in early Welsh and refers to the Brythonic kingdom of Gododdin with a capital at Din Eidyn (Edinburgh) and extending from the area of Stirling to the Tyne.^[45] John Davies places the change from Brythonic to Welsh between 400 and 700.^[21] Offa's Dyke was erected in the mid-8th century, forming a barrier between Wales and Mercia.^[46]

Gene scientists at University College London (UCL) claimed in 2001 that the Welsh are the "true" Britons and are remnants of the Celts that were pushed out by nearby Anglo-Saxon invaders after the Roman withdrawal in the fifth century. The genetic tests suggested that between 50% and 100% of the indigenous population of what was to become England was wiped out. Research for a BBC programme on the Vikings suggested a possible strong link between the Celts and Basques, dating back tens of thousands of years. The UCL research suggested a migration on a huge scale during the Anglo-Saxon period. Dr Mark Thomas, of the Centre for Genetic Anthropology at UCL said, "It appears England is made up of an ethnic cleansing event from people coming across from the continent after the Romans left. Our findings completely overturn the modern view of the origins of the English."^[47]

The process whereby the indigenous population of Wales came to think of themselves as Welsh is not clear. There is plenty of evidence of the use of the term Brythoniaid (Britons); by contrast, the earliest use of the word Kymry (referring not to the people but to the land—and possibly to northern Britain in addition to modern day territory of Wales) is found in a poem dated to about 633. The name of the region in northern England now known as Cumbria is derived from the same root.^[48] Only gradually did Cymru (the land) and Cymry (the people) come to supplant Brython. Although the Welsh language was certainly used at the time, Gwyn A. Williams argues that even at the time of the erection of Offa's Dyke, the people to its west saw themselves as Roman, citing the number of Latin inscriptions still being made into the 8th century.^[49] However, it is unclear whether such inscriptions reveal a general or normative use of Latin as a marker of identity or its selective use by the early Christian Church.

There was immigration to Wales after the Norman Conquest, several Normans encouraged immigration to their new lands; the Landsker Line dividing the Pembrokeshire "Englishry" and "Welshry" is still detectable today.^[50] The terms Englishry and Welshry are used similarly about Gower.^[51]

The population of Wales doubled from 587,000 in 1801 to 1,163,000 in 1851 and had reached 2,421,000 by 1911. Most of the increase came in the coal mining districts especially Glamorganshire, which grew from 71,000 in 1801 to 232,000 in 1851 and 1,122,000 in 1911.^[53] Part of this increase can be attributed to the demographic transition seen in most industrialising countries during the Industrial Revolution, as death-rates dropped and birth-rates remained steady. However, there was also a large-scale migration of people into Wales during the industrial revolution. The English were the most numerous group, but there were also considerable numbers of Irish and smaller numbers of other ethnic groups,^[54][55] including Italians migrated to South Wales.^[56] Wales received other immigration from various parts of the British Commonwealth of Nations in the 20th century, and African-Caribbean and Asian communities add to the ethno-cultural mix, particularly in urban Wales. Many of these self-identify as Welsh.^[57]

It is uncertain how many people in Wales consider themselves to be of Welsh ethnicity, because the 2001 UK census did not offer 'Welsh' as an option; respondents had to use a box marked "Other". Ninety-six per cent of the population of Wales thus described themselves as being White British.^[58] Controversy surrounding the method of determining ethnicity began as early as 2000, when it was revealed that respondents in Scotland and Northern Ireland would be able to tick a box describing themselves as of Scottish or of Irish ethnicity, an option not available for Welsh or English respondents.^[59][60] Prior to the census, Plaid Cymru backed a petition calling for the inclusion of a Welsh tick-box and for the National Assembly to have primary law-making powers and its own National Statistics Office.^[59]

In the absence of a Welsh tick-box, the only tick-boxes available were 'white-British,' 'Irish', or 'other'.^[59] The Scottish parliament insisted that a Scottish ethnicity tick-box be included in the census in Scotland, and with this inclusion as many as 88.11% claimed Scottish ethnicity.^[61] Critics argued that a higher proportion of respondents would have described themselves as of Welsh ethnicity had a Welsh tick-box been made available. Additional criticism was levelled at the timing of the census, which was taken in the middle of the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth crisis. Organisers said that this had not affected the results.^[58] The foot-and-mouth crisis delayed the 2001 United Kingdom general election; the first time since the Second World War that any event had postponed an election.

In the census, as many as 14% of the population took the 'extra step' to write in that they were of Welsh ethnicity.^[62] The highest percentage of those identifying as of Welsh ethnicity was recorded in Gwynedd (at 27%), followed by Carmarthenshire (23%), Ceredigion (22%) and the Isle of Anglesey (19%).^[62] Among respondents between 16 and 74 years of age, those claiming Welsh ethnicity were predominantly in professional and managerial occupations.^[62]

In advance of the 2011 UK Census, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) launched a census consultation exercise. They received replies from 28 different Welsh organisations and a large proportion of these referred to Welsh ethnicity, language or identity.^[63]

For the first time ever in British census history the 2011 Census gave the opportunity for people to describe their identity as Welsh or English. A 'dress rehearsal' of the Census was carried out on the Welsh island of Anglesey because of its rural nature and its high numbers of Welsh speakers.^[63]

The Census, taken on 27 March 2011, asked a number of questions relating to nationality and national identity, including What is your country of birth? ('Wales' was one of the options), How would you describe your national identity? (for the first time 'Welsh' and 'English' were included as options), What is your ethnic group? ('White Welsh/English/Scottish/Northern Irish/British' was an option) and Can you understand, speak, read or write Welsh?.^[64]

As of the 2011 census in Wales, 66 per cent (2.0 million) of residents reported a Welsh national identity (either on its own or combined with other identities). Most residents of Wales (96 per cent, 2.9 million) reported at least one national identity of English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or British. Of the 66 per cent (2.0 million) of Welsh residents who considered themselves to have a Welsh national identity in Wales in 2011, 218,000 responded that they had Welsh and British national identity. Just under 17 per cent (519,000) of people in Wales considered themselves to have a British national identity only.^[65]

A survey published in 2001, by the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends at Oxford University (sample size 1161), found that 14.6 per cent of respondents described themselves as British, not Welsh; 8.3 per cent saw themselves as more British than Welsh; 39.0 per cent described themselves as equally Welsh and British; 20.2 per cent saw themselves as more Welsh than British; and 17.9 per cent described themselves as Welsh, not British.^[66]

According to the 2001 census the number of Welsh speakers in Wales increased for the first time in 100 years, with 20.5% of a population of over 2.9 million claiming fluency in Welsh.^[58] In addition, 28% of the population of Wales claimed to understand Welsh.^[58] The census revealed that the increase was most significant in urban areas, such as Cardiff with an increase from 6.6% in 1991 to 10.9% in 2001, and Rhondda Cynon Taf with an increase from 9% in 1991 to 12.3% in 2001.^[58] However, the proportion of Welsh speakers declined in Gwynedd from 72.1% in 1991 to 68.7% in 2001, and in Ceredigion from 59.1% in 1991 to 51.8% in 2001.^[58] The greatest fluctuation was in Ceredigion, with a 19.5% influx of new residents since 1991.^[58]

The decline in Welsh speakers in much of rural Wales is attributable to non-Welsh-speaking residents moving to North Wales, driving up property prices above what locals may afford, according to former Gwynedd county councillor Seimon Glyn of Plaid Cymru, whose controversial comments in 2001 focused attention on the issue.^[58] As many as a third of all properties in Gwynedd are bought by people from outside Wales.^[67] The issue of locals being priced out of the local housing market is common to many rural communities throughout Britain, but in Wales the added dimension of language complicates the issue, as many new residents do not learn the Welsh language.^[68]

A Plaid Cymru taskforce headed by Dafydd Wigley recommended land should be allocated for affordable local housing, called for grants for locals to buy houses, and recommended that council tax on holiday homes should double.^[69]

However, the same census shows that 25% of residents were born outside Wales. The number of Welsh speakers in other places in Britain is uncertain, but there are significant numbers in the main cities, and there are speakers along the Welsh-English border.

Even among Welsh speakers, very few people speak only Welsh, with nearly all being bilingual in English. However, a large number of Welsh speakers are more comfortable expressing themselves in Welsh than in English. Some prefer to speak English in South Wales or the urbanised areas and Welsh in the North or in rural areas. A speaker's choice of language can vary according to the subject domain (known in linguistics as code-switching).

Due to an increase in Welsh-language nursery education, recent census data reveals a reversal of decades of linguistic decline: there are now more Welsh speakers under five years of age than over 60. For many young people in Wales, the acquisition of Welsh is a gateway to better careers, according to research from the Welsh Language Board and Careers Wales.^[70] The Welsh Government identified media as one of six areas likely to experience greater demand for Welsh speakers:^[70] the sector is Wales's third largest revenue earner.

Although Welsh is a minority language, and thus threatened by the dominance of English, support for the language grew during the second half of the 20th century, along with the rise of Welsh nationalism in the form of groups such as the political party Plaid Cymru and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society). The language is used in the bilingual Welsh Assembly and entered on its records, with English translation. The high costs of translation from English to Welsh have proved controversial.^[71] Technically it is not supposed to be used in the British Parliament as it is referred to as a "foreign language" and is effectively banned as disruptive behaviour,^[72] but several Speakers (most notably George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy, himself born in Wales, near Tonypandy) spoke some Welsh within longer English-language speeches.

Welsh as a first language is largely concentrated in the less urban north and west of Wales, principally Gwynedd, inland Denbighshire, northern and south-western Powys, the Isle of Anglesey, Carmarthenshire, North Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, and parts of western Glamorgan, although first-language and other fluent speakers can be found throughout Wales. However, Cardiff is now home to an urban Welsh-speaking population (both from other parts of Wales and from the growing Welsh-medium schools of Cardiff itself) due to the centralisation and concentration of national resources and organisations in the capital.

For some, speaking Welsh is an important part of their Welsh identity. Parts of the culture are strongly connected to the language — notably the Eisteddfod tradition, poetry and aspects of folk music and dance. Wales also has a strong tradition of poetry in the English language.

Patagonian Welsh (Cymraeg y Wladfa) is a dialect of the Welsh language which is spoken in Y Wladfa in the Argentine region, Patagonia.

Most Welsh people of faith are affiliated with the Church in Wales or other Christian denominations such as the Presbyterian Church of Wales,^[73] Catholicism, and Russian Orthodox Christianity.^[74][75] Wales has a long tradition of nonconformism and Methodism. Other religions Welsh people may be affiliated with include Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Sikhism.

The 2001 Census showed that slightly less than 10% of the Welsh population are regular church or chapel goers (a slightly smaller proportion than in England or Scotland), although about 70% of the population see themselves as some form of Christian. Judaism has quite a long history in Wales, with a Jewish community recorded in Swansea from around 1730. In August 1911, during a period of public order and industrial disputes, Jewish shops across the South Wales coalfield were damaged by mobs. Since that time the Jewish population of that area, which reached a peak of 4,000–5,000 in 1913, has declined with only Cardiff retaining a sizeable Jewish population, of about 2000 in the 2001 Census. The largest non-Christian faith in Wales is Islam, with about 22,000 members in 2001 served by about 40 mosques, following the first mosque established in Cardiff. A college for training clerics has been established at Llanybydder in West Wales. Islam arrived in Wales in the mid 19th century, and it is thought that Cardiff's Yemeni community is Britain's oldest Muslim community, established when the city was one of the world's largest coal-exporting ports. Hinduism and Buddhism each have about 5,000 adherents in Wales, with the rural county of Ceredigion being the centre of Welsh Buddhism. Govinda's temple and restaurant, run by the Hare Krishnas in Swansea, is a focal point for many Welsh Hindus. There are about 2,000 Sikhs in Wales, with the first purpose-built gurdwara opened in the Riverside area of Cardiff in 1989. In 2001 some 7,000 people classified themselves as following "other religions" including a reconstructed form of Druidism, which was the pre-Christian religion of Wales (not to be confused with the Druids of the Gorsedd at the National Eisteddfod of Wales). Approximately one sixth of the population, some 500,000 people, profess no religious faith whatsoever.

The sabbatarian temperance movement was also historically strong among the Welsh, the sale of alcohol being prohibited on Sundays in Wales by the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 – the first legislation specifically issued for Wales since the Middle Ages. From the early 1960s, local council areas were permitted to hold referendums every seven years to determine whether they should be "wet" or "dry" on Sundays: most of the industrialised areas in the east and south went "wet" immediately, and by the 1980s the last district, Dwyfor in the northwest, went wet; since then there have been no more Sunday-closing referendums.

There has been migration from Wales to the rest of Britain throughout its history. During the Industrial Revolution thousands of Welsh people migrated, for example, to Liverpool and Ashton-in-Makerfield.^[77][78] As a result, some people from England, Scotland and Ireland have Welsh surnames.^{[79][80][81][82]}

Other Welsh settlers moved to other parts of Europe, concentrated in certain areas. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a small wave of contract miners from Wales arrived in Northern France; the centres of Welsh-French population are in coal mining towns of the French department of Pas-de-Calais. Welsh settlers from Wales (and later Patagonian Welsh) arrived in Newfoundland in the early 1900s, and founded towns Labrador's coast region. In 1852 Thomas Benbow Phillips of Tregaron established a settlement of about 100 Welsh people in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

Internationally Welsh people have emigrated, in relatively small numbers (in proportion to population, Irish emigration to the USA may have been 26 times greater than Welsh emigration),^[84] to many countries, including the USA (in particular, Pennsylvania), Canada and Y Wladfa in Patagonia, Argentina.^[85][86][87] Jackson County, Ohio was sometimes referred to as "Little Wales", and the Welsh language was commonly heard or spoken among locals by the mid 20th century. Malad City in Idaho, which began as a Welsh Mormon settlement, lays claim to a greater proportion of inhabitants of Welsh descent than anywhere outside Wales itself.^[88] Malad's local High School is known as the "Malad Dragons", and flies the Welsh Flag as its school colours.^[89] Welsh people have also settled in New Zealand and Australia.^[84][90]

Around 1.75 million Americans report themselves to have Welsh ancestry, as did 458,705 Canadians in Canada's 2011 census.^[5][7] This compares with 2.9 million people living in Wales (as of the 2001 census).^[91]

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.^[92]

The Ukrainian city of Donetsk was founded in 1869 by a Welsh businessman, John Hughes (an engineer from Merthyr Tydfil) who constructed a steel plant and several coal mines in the region; the town was thus named Yuzovka (Юзовка) in recognition of his role in its founding ("Yuz" being a Russian or Ukrainian approximation of Hughes).^[93]

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was born in Barry, Wales. After she suffered from bronchopneumonia as a child, her parents were advised that it would aid her recovery to live in a warmer climate. This led the family to migrate to Australia in 1966, settling in Adelaide.