Talk:Henry Adams (farmer)

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Wikify[edit]

I added a wikfy tag to this article because it needs sections, and a few more wikilinks. I can't quite see how the sections would go in so i put this tag on. thanksMeatsgains (talk) 22:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Ap" does not indicate nobility; falsified cf. false genealogy[edit]

First, nobility does not exist in England. The Normans tried to introduce it after the Conquest but it didn't take. Instead, it merged into the pre-existing system and became the Peerage.

These are the five ranks of the peerage, from highest to lowest (male/female): Duke/Duchess, Marquess (Marquis, in Scotland)/Marchionness, Earl/Countess, Viscount/Viscountess, Baron/Baroness. Each title is, or historically was, associated with a landed jurisdiction: dukedom, marquesate, earldom, viscountcy, barony.

Re: Earl/Countess - the Norse title Jarl (Earl in English) along with Norse jarldoms (earldoms) already existed when the Normans introduced "county," "count" and "countess." The word county thus became a synonym for shire; while count has not been used at all. But there was no female equivalent to earl, so the term countess was adopted for that purpose. That is why the wife of an earl is called a countess; because the word "earless" did not exist (and a good thing, too!).

There is also the title of Baronet/Baronetess. This is just an honorific title, similar to knighthood except that baronetcies are heritable titles that pass from one generation to the next. Baronets/Baronetesses are addressed "Sir/Lady" just like knights and their wives.

Nota Bene: There is absolutely nothing noble about a knighthood or damehood. They are simply a form of national honour, like the Congressional Medal of Freedom or the Kennedy Center Honors.

Second, the prefix 'Ap' has nothing at all to do with nobility. It's an apheresis of Map, which is a variation of Mab - which is simply the Welsh for Mac.

Gaelic Mac/Mic/Mhic/Mhoc gets translated to English as Mac/Mc/M'.

Welsh Mab/Map/Ap/P did not get translated but often got incorporated into the English forms of certain names. The best known example is the name Price/Pryce/Preece.

Original: Mab Rhys > Map Rhys > Ap Rhys > P' Rhys > Prhys, Anglicised to Pryce, Price and Preece. The English habit of pronouncing final 's' as 'z' forced the "ce" spelling. The pronunciation of "i" was originally "ee" but changed with the Great Vowel Shift, so the Pryce/Price spelling was modified by some to Preece to keep the original vowel, while others left it y/i and simply pronounced it the Welsh way in Welsh and the English way in English.

Finally, there are deliberately falsified genealogies (like the famous one created by Geoffrey of Monmouth) and then there are false genealogies. The latter are the result of well-meaning people who lack training in research methodology and genealogy. For example, some of Henry Adams's descendants (of whom I am one) went into politics. So it's an easy leap for somebody with little or no training to presume that Henry was somehow connected to a political family.

Likewise, it's even easier to fall into the trap of assuming people in the same area with the same surname must be related. They might be or they might not. In the case of Adams, this surname is actually a truncation of Adamson - a patronymic based on the personal name Adam and meaning "Adam's son." Even in a small community like Barton St David, there might be any number of people with a patrilineal ancestor named Adam who, thus, might have the surname Adamson or Adams.

English and Welsh surnames are not at all like the highly sophisticated Scottish clan system, where everybody named "Mackenzie" is definitely and always a member of the Clan Mackenzie - because of the tribal way Highland Scottish society evolved and remained until the modern era. (And even today, almost all of the people who live on the traditional lands of the Clan Mackay are members of the Clan Mackay.) But even in Scotland, not everybody's a highlander - plus "The Highlander" himself, Christopher Lambert, is from Great Neck; and Sean Connery's a half-Irish lowlander. But I digress.

The salient point being: Some of the errors in Henry Adams' genealogies are falsified; others are false/erroneous or unverified/unverifiable; and still others might be quite right. 2601:645:C300:C1C:A1C1:D7B2:E7B7:706A (talk) 23:41, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]