The Tudors. As far as dynastic names go, this must rank as one of, if not the, most famous name in British royal history, and perhaps even in all the Anglosphere. Sure, the Plantagenets and the Windsors have great brand value, but The Tudors are a veritable industry unto themselves, spanning every conceivable type of medium that are devoured by millions of people worldwide. But where does the name Tudor even come from, and did those kings and queens who reigned between 1485 and 1603 even regard themselves as Tudor?
Etymology
First, the name itself. Tudor in this case is an anglicisation of Tudur, a north Welsh given name that in itself is a variant of the south Welsh name Tewdwr. It would appear that Tudur/Tewdwr, from the Proto-Celtic name Toutorīxs, derives ultimately from the Ancient Greek name Theódoros, or Theodore, understood to mean ‘gift of God’ (theós for God and dṓron for gift).
Medieval Welsh naming customs
Now, until the sixteenth century, the Welsh people generally did not use fixed surnames, instead employing a patronymic naming system similar to that used by many medieval European peoples. How this worked in practice was that a child was given a baptismal name, followed by ap (son of) if a boy or ferch (daughter of) if a girl, and then the father’s given name.
So, for example, if a boy was named Dafydd and his father was Gwilym, the boy’s name would be Dafydd ap Gwilym. This could be extended to include a grandparent. Let’s assume Gwilym’s own father was called Gruffudd so his name was Gwilym ap Gruffudd – if young Dafydd needed to be differentiated more in his community, his name could be extended as Dafydd ap Gwilym ap Gruffudd – Dafydd son of Gwilym son of Gruffudd.
It was said by the 12th century Norman-Welsh clerk Gerald of Wales that the Welsh people could recite their pedigree back around eight generations. Their very names were a genealogical record. All Welsh names, then, were in essence given names only, rather than surnames, since surnames did not exist.
Tewdwr and Tudur
It cannot be tracked with any certainty when the Welsh begun using Tudur or Tewdwr as given names, but there are a few prominent examples. In the mid-6th century, in what is now Brittany and Cornwall, supposedly lived Tewdwr Mawr (or Theodore the Great), a king that oppressed and martyred a series of Irish missionaries. The name features again in the 11th century through Tewdwr ap Cadell, a descendant of revered Welsh kings like Rhodri Mawr (Rhodri the Great) and Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good) but better remembered as the father of Rhys ap Tewdwr, Prince of the south Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth. This Rhys was a contemporary of England’s William the Conqueror, though would lose his life resisting Norman encroachment in 1093.
When Rhys ap Tewdwr’s great-granddaughter Gwenllian ferch Rhys, a Princess of Deheubarth no less, married a dutiful man from Gwynedd named Ednyfed Fychan, the name was reintroduced into the family lineage as the northern variant of Tudur. This cannot be proven, sadly, particularly as Ednyfed himself was descended in the maternal line from someone called Tudur Trefor, but it stands to reason that Ednyfed’s descendants sought to amplify their royal connections to enhance their standing at a moment.
Ednyfed’s grandson was bestowed the name Tudur, and became an influential nobleman who lived during Edward I’s hard-won conquest of the last Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd. This name was passed on to Tudur’s own grandson, known as Tudur ap Goronwy. This second Tudur – known as Tudur Fychan which means something akin to younger to differentiate him from his grandfather, established a fearsome reputation in North Wales amongst the English settler community. When he died in September 1367, his death was marked by a touching elegy by the renowned bard Iolo Goch who mourned his ‘fine patriarch’ who was ‘the most beloved man of all’. He would leave behind five sons, Ednyfed, Goronwy, Gwilym, Rhys and Maredudd, all of whose names, of course, was completed by adding ‘ap Tudur’, or son of Tudur.
The House of Meredith?
In the early fifteenth century, Owain ap Maredudd, the son of Maredudd ap Tudur, left his homeland behind, seeking opportunities in England. It is unknown when exactly Owain migrated across the border, but in May 1421 there is a reference to an Owen Mereddith in the household of an English magnate called Walter Hungerford.
Now, once Owain started to establish his position in England, it seems his Welsh name caused ample bewilderment among his non-Welsh peers, and there is a clear inconsistency in how he is documented in the English recorded. He was born Owain ap Maredudd, or to extend it one generation back, Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur. When he appealed for denizenship in 1432, the name he provided was Oweyn fitz Meredyth, which following the rules of patronymics, makes sense – Fitz, like Ap, means son of. In 1434 he appears in the Rolls of Chester as Oweyn ap Meredith and again in 1437 as Owen ap Mereduth.
But in 1437, Owain’s name is first contracted as Oweyn Tidr, perhaps the result of a clerk misunderstanding Welsh patronymics and adopting the latter name of the three, that belonging to Owain’s grandfather, as an English-style surname. The following year there are references to Owini ap Tuder, Owen ap Tedir, Owin ap Tuder, and Owen ap Meredith ap Tidur, before two further mentions in 1439 of Owen Meredeth and Owen Meridith.
Though he would always have regarded himself as Owain ap Maredudd (and thus finding any variant that groups those two names together acceptable) by the end of his life in 1461, and certainly by the accession of his grandson to the English throne in 1485, it seems he was simply Owyn Tetyr, Tytyr, Tyder or Tidder, with Maredudd nowhere to be seen. Once anglicised, this name eventually becomes rendered as Owen Tudor.
Tudor, merely an English rendering of his grandfather’s given name, is the name by which Owain, and his descendants, are remembered in history, eventually entering the historical record consistently under this spelling in the 17th Century – England had been just a correct stroke of a quill away from having a royal dynasty known by the name of Meredith rather than Tudor!
Were they known as the Tudors?
In the propaganda war taking place in the run-up to what became the Battle of Bosworth, Richard III attempted to score some points by belittling the Welsh background of Henry Tudor (or should that be Harri ab Edmwnd ap Owain). Though Henry likely considered himself Henry of Richmond, after the earldom that had been stripped from him, Richard simply called him ‘Henry Tidder, son of Edmond Tidder, son of Owen Tidder’.
On a sidenote, what is interesting here is that Richard’s spelling, Tidder, actually comes phonetically close to how Tudur is pronounced, rather than the Tudor of today. This proves to me that Tudor as we say it was not recognised in 1485, but the Welsh Tudur still was.
So, to Richard, and indeed to us, Henry was Henry Tudor. But would he, his son Henry VIII, or his granddaughter have regarded themselves as ‘The Tudors’, a dynasty distinct from the Plantagenets that came before, or the Stuarts and Hanoverians that came after? Would people living in 1515 acknowledge they now lived under ‘The Tudors’? The truth is, not really, no.
Kings and queens of England traditionally viewed themselves as a continuation of those that came before, and categorising clusters of royals into separate families or dynasties was a later construction by historians for simple convenience. Henry VII’s employment of the so-called Tudor Rose is in itself a dynastic statement of continuity, Henry laying claim to two bloodlines to create a brand new one. It isn’t a clean break.
Henry VIII did not consider his dynasty as beginning with his father, because he himself was the latest in a long line of kings whose blood he shared. He famously sought to follow in the footsteps of warrior kings like Henry V and Edward III, for example. He did not restrict his ambitions to only those he has since been lumped in with by hasty historians.
Henry VII, I am sure, would not shed a tear that his male-line descent died out with Elizabeth I in 1603, when his female-line descent instantly picked up the baton in the person of James I/VI, and that every monarch up to the present Charles III is his direct descendant.
Let us consider the Plantagenets; students of history know this dynasty ruled over England between 1154 and 1485, beginning with Henry II, son of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. It is believed that Geoffrey was known as Plantagenet due to a sprig of broom, Planta genista, he wore in his helm. No subsequent king of England, however, bore the name Plantagenet nor regarded themselves as the Plantagenets. The name was revived in 1460 when Richard, 3rd Duke of York, laid claim to the English throne. To emphasise what he considered the better ancestral claim, York took to signing documents as ‘Richard Plantaginet, commonly called Duc of York’. Neither of his sons, Edward IV or Richard III, would bear the name, though Edward does bestow it upon an illegitimate son.
Of Henry VII’s children, for example, his eldest son Arthur was not Arthur Tudor as both you and I would call him. He was simply Arthur, Prince of Wales. He didn’t require a surname. Similarly, his siblings were given the designation ‘of England’ until they received titles, for example, the future Henry VIII was consecutively ‘Prince Henry of England’, ‘Prince Henry, Duke of York’ and then Henry, Prince of Wales’.
But it would be premature to suggest there was not a strong sense of family amongst those we now regard as ‘The Tudors’. Henry VII ensured his three maternal uncles, Jasper, Owen and David Owen, were kept close by as king, and would fund repairs to the tombs of his father Edmund and grandfather, another Owen. He commissioned an investigation into his Welsh lineage to understand more of where he came from.
He also, however, attempted to canonise another uncle, Henry VI, very much considered a Plantagenet according to the false constructs of historians. Henry VII did not view his ‘Tudor’ or ‘Plantagenet’ relations particularly differently – this notion can be extended to his great-great-grandson James VI/I, the first of the Stuarts we are told, who chose to be buried with the first of the Tudors.
The concept of the House of Tudor, Stuart, Plantagenet, York, Lancaster, and so on, as distinct concepts, however, is overplayed. Medieval monarchs were simply the King, or Queen, of England.
So, that is where the Tudor name came from, how it became mangled into an English-ish version, and eventually came to be conveniently retrospectively applied to three generations of kings and queens that changed the face of England and Wales forever.
They wouldn’t have called themselves the Tudors, they could conceivably have been the Merediths, but at this point, the Tudor name is here to stay.
Son of Prophecy
'Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor' is a 300-year history of one Welsh family. It tells how they emerged from the wilds of Gwynedd, navigated the murky and violent waters of Welsh-Anglo politics, and eventually found their way, almost improbably, onto the English throne. This story involves war, treason, escapes and love.
Fourteen years in the making, from defiant Welsh rebels to unlikely English kings, this is the story of the Tudors, but not how you know it.
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A fascinating read! Thank you. I particularly enjoyed the way you tracked the names of Henry VII's ancestors & shared how they might have called themselves. It's so interesting to me the gap between what people would have called themselves and the way that they have been named or grouped by later historians - even down to the pronunciation of Tudor vs. Tudur. I've never even thought of that before! Really insightful; thank you.
Fascinating article! I really enjoyed learning about the origins of the Tudor name in ‘Son of Prohecy’, so I’m glad you have gone into in even more detail here.