Powell
also Howell, Howells
ap Hywel — the contracted patronymic that descends from Hywel Dda, the king who wrote Welsh law.
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Powell
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Powell.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
The pledge surface for chiefdoms and missions is being built. Until it ships, register your name through the submit form.
Stake your name →What does the Powell name mean?
ap Hywel — son of Hywel — contracted in the patronymic-elision pattern that also gave us Pritchard (ap Richard), Pugh (ap Hugh) and Bevan (ab Evan). The 'a' of 'ap' falls away, the 'p' attaches to the following name, and the result is hereditary. Hywel itself is an ancient Welsh personal name borne by Hywel Dda — Hywel the Good — the 10th-century king who codified Welsh law.
The history of Powell
Powell is densest in mid- and south-east Wales — Powys, Monmouthshire, the Marches. The name preserves the patronymic mechanic in its first letter, and traces (in popular tradition, more loosely than in genealogy) to Hywel Dda — Hywel ap Cadell, king of Deheubarth and most of Wales in the 940s, the first ruler to codify the Welsh laws into a written corpus that would govern Welsh communities for the next four hundred years.
The unrelated variant Howell / Howells preserves the patronymic without the 'p-' contraction. Both names share the same etymological root.
The Powells of Nanteos near Aberystwyth, an 18th-century Cardiganshire gentry family, were keepers of the Nanteos Cup — a wooden cup of medieval origin that 19th- and 20th-century Welsh tradition identified, optimistically, as a fragment of the Holy Grail brought from Glastonbury at the Dissolution.
Notable bearers of the Powell name
- Anthony Powell (1905–2000) — novelist (A Dance to the Music of Time)
- Enoch Powell (1912–1998) — politician, classicist
- General Colin Powell (1937–2021) — US Secretary of State, of distant Welsh-via-Jamaica descent
Stories of Powell
Frequently asked
What does the surname Powell mean?
Where does the Powell family come from?
Who are some famous Powells?
Is Howell the same family as Powell?
Neighbouring clans
- EvansSon of John, by the Welsh road — the cousin name of Jones.
- LewisLlywelyn anglicised — a princely name carried into common use across the Marches and the south.
- OwenThe princely name — Owain in Welsh, the surname of the last revolt and the first Tudor.
- LloydLlwyd — the grey one — the great descriptive surname of the central Welsh ridge.