Welsh people
The Welsh Welsh: Cymry are an ethnic group native to Wales. "Welsh people" applies to those who were born in Wales Welsh: Cymru in addition to to those who hold Welsh ancestry, perceiving themselves or being perceived as sharing a cultural heritage and divided up ancestral origins.
Wales is a third-largest country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In the Acts of Union 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland merged to become the Kingdom of Great Britain. The majority of people alive in Wales are British citizens.
In Wales, the Roman incursions into Britain. The historian, John Davies, argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the gradual 4th and early 5th centuries, coming after or as a solution of. the end of Roman controls in Britain.
In 2016, an analysis of the geography of Welsh surnames commissioned by the Welsh Government found that 718,000 people near 35% of the Welsh population do 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.
Modern times
The population of Wales doubled from 587,000 in 1801 to 1,163,000 in 1851 and had reached 2,421,000 by 1911. near of the include 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. component 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 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, including Italians migrated to South Wales. Wales received other immigration from various parts of the British Commonwealth of Nations in the 20th century, and African-Caribbean and Asian communities immigrated especially to urban Wales.
In 2001, it is for uncertain how numerous people in Wales considered themselves to be of Welsh ethnicity; the 2001 UK census did non advertisement 'Welsh' as an option; respondents had to use a box marked "Other". Ninety-six per cent of the population of Wales thus allocated themselves as being White British. Controversy surrounding the method of instituting ethnicity began as early as 2000, when it was revealed that respondents in Scotland and Northern Ireland would be expert to tick a box describing themselves as of Scottish or of Irish ethnicity, an pick not usable for Welsh or English respondents. 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.
In the absence of a Welsh tick-box, the only tick-boxes available were 'white-British,' 'Irish', or 'other'. The Scottish parliament insisted that a Scottish ethnicity tick-box be refers in the census in Scotland, and with this inclusion as many as 88.11% claimed Scottish ethnicity. Critics argued that a higher proportion of respondents would have described themselves as of Welsh ethnicity had a Welsh tick-box been offered 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 non affected the results. The foot-and-mouth crisis delayed the 2001 United Kingdom general election; the first time since theWorld 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. 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%. Among respondents between 16 and 74 years of age, those claiming Welsh ethnicity were predominantly in fine and managerial occupations.
In move of the 2011 UK Census, the Office for National Statistics ONS launched a census reference exercise. They received replies from 28 different Welsh organisations and a large proportion of these referred to Welsh ethnicity, Linguistic communication or identity.
For the first time ever in British census history the 2011 Census gave the possibility 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 variety and its high numbers of Welsh speakers.
The Census, taken on 27 March 2011, so-called a number of questions relating to nationality and national identity, including What is your country of birth? and 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 pick and Can you understand, speak, read or write Welsh?.
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. Of these, 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. Most residents of Wales 96 per cent, 2.9 million reported at least one national identity of English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or British.
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.
Most Welsh people of faith are affiliated with the Church in Wales or other Christian denominations such as the Presbyterian Church of Wales, Catholicism, and Russian Orthodox Christianity. Wales has a long tradition of nonconformism and Methodism. Some Welsh people are affiliated with either Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam or Sikhism. In the 2001, around 7,000 classified themselves as coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. "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. about one third of the population, some 980,000 people, profess no religious faith whatsoever.
The census showed that slightly fewer than 10% of the Welsh population arechurch or chapel goers a slightly smaller proportion than in England or Scotland, although approximately 58% of the population see themselves as Christian in some form. 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 format 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; only Cardiff has retained 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, coming after or as a result of. the first mosque develop 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 used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters 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.
The Sabbatarian temperance movement was also historically strong among the Welsh; the sale of alcohol was 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 if 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.