Welsh people

The Welsh (Welsh: Cymry) are an ethnic group native to Wales. Wales is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. The majority of people living in Wales are British citizens.

In Wales, the Welsh language (Welsh: Cymraeg) is protected by law. Welsh remains the predominant language in many parts of Wales, particularly in North Wales and parts of West Wales, though English is the predominant language in South Wales. The Welsh language is also taught in schools in Wales; and, even in regions of Wales in which Welsh people predominantly speak English on a daily basis, the Welsh language is spoken at home among family or in informal settings, with Welsh speakers often engaging in code-switching and translanguaging. In the English-speaking areas of Wales, many Welsh people are bilingually fluent or semi-fluent in the Welsh language or, to varying degrees, capable of speaking or understanding the language at limited or conversational proficiency levels. The Welsh language is descended from Brythonic, spoken across Britain since before the Roman invasion.

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. Over 300,000 Welsh people live in London.