Welsh Americans
Welsh Americans (Welsh: Americanwyr Cymreig) are an American ethnic group whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in Wales, United Kingdom. In the 2008 U.S. Census community survey, an estimated 1.98 million Americans had Welsh ancestry, 0.6% of the total U.S. population. This compares with a population of 3 million in Wales. However, 3.8% of Americans appear to bear a Welsh surname.
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Languages | |
| English, Welsh | |
| Religion | |
| Protestant and Roman Catholic | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Breton Americans, Cornish Americans, English Americans, Scottish Americans, Irish Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Manx Americans, Welsh Canadians, Welsh Australians |
There have been several U.S. Presidents with Welsh ancestry, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James A. Garfield, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon and Barack Obama. President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Colin Powell and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are also of Welsh heritage.
The proportion of the population with a name of Welsh origin ranges from 9.5% in South Carolina to 1.1% in North Dakota. Typically, names of Welsh origin are concentrated in the mid-Atlantic states, New England, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama and in Appalachia, West Virginia and Tennessee. By contrast, there are relatively fewer Welsh names in the northern Midwest and the Southwest.