A Big...Big...Big...Picture 3

Language is spoken before it is written.  The folks who were the first to speak the Welsh language is presented by Bede in his book "The Ecclesiastical History of The English Nation"written between 680 - 703 AD.  In chapter I, he writes "This island at present....contains five nations, the English [Anglo-Saxon], Britons [Brythonic], Scots [Gaelic], Picts [Pictish], and Latins [Latin], each in its own peculiar dialect..."  He continues to write "The Latin tongue is, by the study of the Scriptures, become common to all the rest."  So by 700 AD Latin was the chief language of the clerks, and writers of the time, but had also become a language between the nations. [Please note that the brackets are mine and not Bede's.]

Now for the Celts, the spoken language had become the only means to transmit their legends and stories.  To accomplish this generation after generation, a special position was established to manage this endeavor.  The Bard he was called.

Significant was his role in maintaining Celtic, to become Welsh culture, that the above drawing gives an impression of this activity by Edward Jones in 1784.  Oral tradition was the norm.  Words and their vocal expression, often to music [the harp shown above] , became the foundation to the written words that became Welsh.  Now, look back to the previous post that give words in the languages noted by Bede.

Bede's text is taken from:  Everyman's Library 479, History, J.M. Dent & Sons LTD, 1954, London, p. 5.

The drawing is taken from : Wales Her Origins Struggles And Later History Institutions and Manners, by Gilbert Stone, Frederick A. Stokes Co., NY, 1915. [Please note that the drawing is by Edward Jones, 1784...those Jones are everywhere.]

A Big...Big...Big Picture 1

Having completed a long series of post on the first JONES to appear in the legal records of England and Wales, I thought it would be helpful to try and put together a "big picture" of this surname.  The next group of posts will present a summary chronology intended to piece together the many years of JONES surname tree climbing that brought me to believe its origin is more "phonetic" than "genetic".  Say what!?...you might be thinking.  Only time will tell [actually the next posts] if the trail to be presented is an accurate description of our surname.  Come follow along and make your own opinion.  Please feel free to correct or make any comments that will help complete our JONES surname story.  So here we go.

Let's begin with our Celtic roots and the languages that formed their distinctive cultural groups.  Language can be defined as the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a considerable community.  What is generally accepted as the "language" roots of the various groups of folks that came to settle the geographic areas where the JONES surname has its highest frequencies is show as follows:

Six distinct cultural groups formed their unique way of communicating.  The Irish, Scottish, and Manx making one branch [Q-Celtic], and the Welsh, Cornish, and Breton forming a second.  It is in Wales that the JONES surname has its highest frequency than anywhere in the world.  What has this to do with the JONES surname I asked at one point in the distant past.  It took some years to sort through this question, but understanding the shared language roots for what has become the present cultures of Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Manx, and Wales [Cornwall and Brittany not excluded] helped me form a linguistic origin in a bridge to the JONES surname.  A place to begin the first "big picture" it is.

The best reference for this research can be found in "The Celtic World", edited by Miranda J. Green, and published 1995 by Routledge, London.  [Language and society among the Insular Celts 400 - 1000 can be found in Part XI: Celtic Britain Post AD 400, beginning page 703.]

"Walas"

As the Roman Empire gradually conquered the known world, they produced a new Celtic culture that spoke both a Celtic language and a Latin language. The Germanic tribes that resisted the Roman advance remained mostly north of the Danube. [They were ultimately able to get their revenge sacking the city of Rome some 500 years later.] Those tribes remaining true to their German roots had a word for those Celtic folks to the south. These folks had betrayed their German roots and had become "Romanized". These Celts had taken on Latin, and of course, this was not acceptable to the true Germanic tribes. The Germans used the term "walas" to denote those "foreigners" who spoke Celtic languages but were also Latin-speaking. It was this term that was later applied to Celts in general. Little did these Germans know that years later, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, would apply this term to describe the Britons who occupied the island yet to come, and the country yet to be, Wales. It is Wales that is home to our surname JONES.

The Beginnings

The JONES surname had its beginning with struggle...struggle between two races, struggle between two languages, and struggle between two cultures. Ironically, these two races had their own beginnings within the same central European geography. One was south of the Danube, and the other north. The one south was centered around salt mines, which gave it the name Hallstatt Culture, from the very word for salt. The one north ultimately migrated to the coastal areas facing the North Sea to become Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. It was the clash of these two cultures lasting more than a thousand years that led to the surname JONES. Each culture shared a common belief (paradigm) that "might makes right". To both cultures the sword certainly spoke louder than words, and it was by the sword that both survived and expanded to end up fighting each other in a land called Albion.

The Hallstatt Culture which, at first, shared a common European language root with the northern tribes, branched westward to a developing period call "La Tene". Here a warrior-aristocracy evolved where a warrior took his two-wheeled chariot and sword to his grave! The earliest roots of languages, by this time, had split with the Celtic branch dividing from the Germanic branch. They both shared the culture of family, which was the center of society and social rank. It is unclear at what point the southern group became known at "Celts", but they had an advantage over most other tribes due to iron. Their iron weapons had a distinct advantage when their might was to make right. As their culture moved southward, eastward, and westward, they shared a common language called "Continental Celtic" which was to branch into Brythonic, Gaulish, and Manx. The Germanic branch divided into the Northern Germanic languages and the Western Germanic languages. By the time the Anglo-Saxon language and the Welsh language collided on an island centuries yet to come, their tongues had become so distinct and different sounding, that they could not understand or pronounce the other's speech.

It is the conflict between these two languages that leads to the surname JONES.