Price

also Preece, ap Rhys

ap Rhys, the Welsh contraction working on the name of a king.

Origin: Morgannwg, Wales
Famous bearer: Hugh Price (c.1495–1574), founder of Jesus College, Oxford
Register: Welsh family

Territory of Price

CoreHistoric reach

The seat of Price

Seat vacant

Chief

No one leads the Price 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 Price has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.

The Price clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.

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What does the Price name mean?

ap Rhys, son of Rhys, contracted in spoken Welsh by the same elision that produced Powell (ap Hywel), Pritchard (ap Richard) and Pugh (ap Hugh). The native Welsh name Rhys means 'ardour' or 'rush', the noun used of the charge of a horseman, and was borne by Rhys ap Tewdwr, the eleventh-century King of Deheubarth, and by his great-grandson the Lord Rhys (1132–1197), the most powerful Welsh prince of his age. The patronymic crystallised under Tudor-era surname compression, the older spelling Preece preserving the consonant cluster more honestly than Price does.

The history of Price

Price is the southern Welsh patronymic, densest in Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and the Valleys, and across the Brecon-Carmarthen line of mid-Wales. Where Powell, Pritchard and Pugh take their roots from imported or Norman first-names, Price carries the native Welsh name Rhys, the name of the Deheubarth kings, into the modern surname.

Hugh Price (c.1495–1574), Brecon-born lawyer and Treasurer of St Davids Cathedral, founded Jesus College in the University of Oxford in 1571 by royal charter from Elizabeth I, the first Oxford college specifically endowed to take Welsh undergraduates. He gave the foundation six hundred pounds from his own estate; the college has, in the four centuries since, kept its Welsh affiliation in residence and in its principalship.

Richard Price (1723–1791), the Glamorgan-born Dissenting minister, was the moral philosopher, mathematician and political pamphleteer who edited the posthumous 1763 paper of Thomas Bayes on inverse probability (the foundation of modern Bayesian statistics), advised William Pitt the Younger on the redemption of the national debt, supported the American Revolution in the 1776 *Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty*, and triggered the pamphlet war that produced Burke's *Reflections on the Revolution in France* and Paine's *Rights of Man* with a single Old Jewry sermon in November 1789.

Notable bearers of the Price name

Hugh Price (c.1495–1574), founder of Jesus College, Oxford
Richard Price (1723–1791), philosopher, mathematician and pamphleteer
Vincent Price (1911–1993), American character actor of Welsh ancestry

Stories of Price

Richard Price at the Old Jewry
1789
On the evening of Wednesday the fourth of November 1789, in the meeting-house of the Old Jewry off Cheapside in the City of London, the sixty-six-year-old Welsh Dissenting minister Richard Price (born at Tynton in the parish of Llangeinor in Glamorgan on the twenty-third of February 1723) delivered to the Revolution Society of London his *Discourse on the Love of Our Country*, a sermon-and-political-address preached on the anniversary-eve of the 1688 Glorious Revolution and explicitly extending the principles of 1688 to the French National Assembly constituted in Paris three months before. The address closed with the Nunc Dimittis of the aged Simeon ('Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation'), applied by Price to the political dispensation of 1789 that he had spent his forty-year ministry arguing for. Edmund Burke, who had until that month been Price's parliamentary ally on the American question, read the printed sermon when it appeared in early 1790 and wrote, in direct response, the *Reflections on the Revolution in France* (November 1790), which provoked Thomas Paine's *Rights of Man* (March 1791), Mary Wollstonecraft's *Vindication of the Rights of Men* (December 1790) and her *Vindication of the Rights of Woman* (January 1792), and James Mackintosh's *Vindiciae Gallicae* (April 1791). The pamphlet war that came out of the Old Jewry sermon defined the next two centuries of conservative-and-liberal political philosophy in the English-speaking world.
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Frequently asked

What does the surname Price mean?

Where does the Price family come from?

The Price family is rooted in Morgannwg and Gwent, in Wales. Within that, the name was particularly concentrated in The Valleys, Bro Morgannwg and Sir Fynwy. The atlas page for the name records the historical territory it has held over the centuries.

Where did the Price family historically hold territory?

At its greatest historical extent, the Price name has been concentrated in Sir Gâr, Ceredigion, Powys, Sir Benfro and Abertawe & Gŵyr. The atlas page distinguishes the core territory of the name from this wider historical reach with hatched silhouettes on the map.

Is Price a Wales surname?

Yes, Price is a Wales surname. Its editorial home in this atlas is Wales, where the historical territory and family record of the name are concentrated.

How old is the Price surname?

Price is the southern Welsh patronymic, densest in Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and the Valleys, and across the Brecon-Carmarthen line of mid-Wales. European hereditary surnames crystallised broadly between the 12th and 14th centuries, and the Price name took its modern form within that long settlement.

What is the Price family known for?

Ap Rhys, the Welsh contraction working on the name of a king. Price is the southern Welsh patronymic, densest in Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and the Valleys, and across the Brecon-Carmarthen line of mid-Wales.

Who is the most famous Price?

The best-known bearer of the Price name is Hugh Price (c.1495–1574), founder of Jesus College, Oxford. Other prominent figures of the family include Richard Price (1723–1791), philosopher, mathematician and pamphleteer and Vincent Price (1911–1993), American character actor of Welsh ancestry.

Who are some famous Prices?

Notable bearers of the Price name include Hugh Price (c.1495–1574), founder of Jesus College, Oxford, Richard Price (1723–1791), philosopher, mathematician and pamphleteer and Vincent Price (1911–1993), American character actor of Welsh ancestry. Each is profiled on the family page, with cross-links to the geography, stories, and historical events tied to their life.

What stories are told about the Price family?

The Price family is associated with Richard Price at the Old Jewry. Each story has its own page on this site with the full account, the date, the location, and the other families involved.

What is the story of Richard Price at the Old Jewry?

On the evening of Wednesday the fourth of November 1789, in the meeting-house of the Old Jewry off Cheapside in the City of London, the sixty-six-year-old Welsh Dissenting minister Richard Price (born at Tynton in the parish of Llangeinor in Glamorgan on the twenty-third of February 1723) delivered to the Revolution Society of London his *Discourse on the Love of Our Country*, a sermon-and-political-address preached on the anniversary-eve of the 1688 Glorious Revolution and explicitly extending the principles of 1688 to the French National Assembly constituted in Paris three months before. The address closed with the Nunc Dimittis of the aged Simeon ('Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation'), applied by Price to the political dispensation of 1789 that he had spent his forty-year ministry arguing for. The event is dated to 1789.

Is Preece the same family as Price?

Yes. Preece is a historical spelling variant of the Price name. The two share the same lineage and family affiliation; different parishes, clerks and migration registrars recorded the same name in slightly different forms, and the variant spellings sit on the same family tree.

Is ap Rhys the same family as Price?

Yes. ap Rhys is a historical spelling variant of the Price name. The two share the same lineage and family affiliation; different parishes, clerks and migration registrars recorded the same name in slightly different forms, and the variant spellings sit on the same family tree.

Where is the Price surname found today?

Wales is the primary historical home of the Price surname. In the modern era, the name is also borne across the wider diaspora, particularly in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where families carry the line of descent from the same Wales origin recorded on this page.

What does the Clan Rising page for the Price family cover?

The Clan Rising page for the Price family covers the meaning of the surname, the historical geography of the name, famous bearers of the name, traditional stories and the seat of the head of the family. Each section is linked to the underlying atlas of Wales so the name can be read in the geography that shaped it.

Who is the head of the Price family today?

The seat for the head of the Price family is currently vacant on this register. Clan Rising is rebuilding the chief and family structure for the modern era, and the family page allows readers to claim the seat or pledge to the name.