Welsh Americans

Welsh Americans (Welsh: Americanwyr Cymreig) are an American ethnic group whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in Wales, United Kingdom. In the 2008 U.S. Census community survey, an estimated 1.98 million Americans had Welsh ancestry, 0.6% of the total U.S. population. This compares with a population of 3 million in Wales. However, 3.8% of Americans appear to bear a Welsh surname.

There have been several US presidents with Welsh ancestry, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James A. Garfield, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon and Barack Obama. Other prominent figures of Welsh descent in American history include Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America; P. G. T. Beauregard, a top general in the Confederate States Army; Hubert Humphrey, who served as Vice President of the United States; and Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton, who both served as Secretary of State.

The proportion of the American population with a name of Welsh origin ranges from 9.5% in South Carolina to 1.1% in North Dakota. Typically, names of Welsh origin are concentrated in the mid-Atlantic states, New England, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama and in Appalachia, West Virginia and Tennessee. By contrast, there are relatively fewer Welsh names in the northern Midwest and the Southwest.