Edwards
Son of Edward, densest along the eastern marches where the name first crossed.
- Origin
- Powys, Wales
- Famous bearer
- Lewis Edwards (1809–1887), founder-principal of the Bala Theological College
- Register
- Welsh family
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Edwards
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Edwards community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Edwards has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Edwards clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Edwards clan →What does the Edwards name mean?
Son of Edward. The patronymic 'ap Edward', Edward being a name of Old English origin, Eadweard, 'guardian of wealth', compressed under the Tudor administration with the genitive 's' added. The name was brought into Welsh use particularly through the eastern marches, where Edwardian English influence had run deepest.
The history of Edwards
Edwards is among the most common Welsh surnames, with its highest density along the eastern border country, Wrexham, Denbighshire and the historic Powys Fadog. The name's eastward bias is the trace of where the English baptismal name Edward took root first in the medieval period before the Tudor compression made it hereditary.
Thomas Edwards (1738–1810), 'Twm o'r Nant', Tom of the Stream, was the great Welsh-language interlude playwright of the 18th century, working a folk theatre that survived the puritan disapproval of the chapels by going to fairs.
Sir Owen Morgan Edwards (1858–1920) of Llanuwchllyn was the first Chief Inspector of Schools for Wales, the founding editor of the magazine Cymru, and the most important figure in the early-20th-century Welsh-language education movement.
Champions of the Edwards name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has its own page — biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
- Jonathan Edwards
The Welsh-descended Massachusetts Congregational divine whose 1741 Enfield sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God touched off the First Great Awakening, and whose Freedom of the Will (1754) is on every modern list of the foundational works of American philosophy.
- Sir Gareth Edwards
The Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen-born Welsh scrum-half whose fifty-three consecutive caps for Wales between 1967 and 1978, three Five Nations Grand Slams (1971, 1976, 1978), two Lions tour series wins (1971 in New Zealand and 1974 in South Africa, both as part of unbeaten Lions tours), and his single greatest try (the Barbarians try against the All Blacks at Cardiff Arms Park on the twenty-seventh of January 1973) made him by general acclamation the greatest rugby union player of the twentieth century.
Step Into History
Walk the streets and seats the Edwards name knew — a photoreal walk through time, on foot.
Step Into History · New
Edward I's walled bastide and mighty castle in North Wales, a generation after the conquest — the banded towers still rising.
Step Into History · New
Owain Glyndŵr's mountain fortress and court at the high tide of Welsh independence, the English siege lines gathering below.
Step Into History · New
The grandest castle-palace in Wales at its height — the moated Yellow Tower, fountain courts and long gallery, on the eve of the siege.
Notable bearers of the Edwards name
- Lewis Edwards (1809–1887), founder-principal of the Bala Theological College
- Twm o'r Nant, Thomas Edwards (1738–1810), Welsh-language interlude playwright
- Sir O. M. Edwards (1858–1920), Welsh educational reformer
- Gareth Edwards (b. 1947), rugby player, often called the greatest of all time