Rowland Jones

Born in 1722 in Caernarfonshire, Wales, he was raised in a family connected with legal work and spent part of his early career in the law, including time in London. He later became a wealthy man through inheritance and marriage, which gave him the freedom to pursue his intellectual interests.

He is remembered chiefly as a philologist with strikingly original views. In works such as The Origin of Language and Nations and Circles of Gomer, he argued that Welsh preserved deep traces of the earliest human language, an idea that set him apart from more conventional scholars of his day.

Though his theories were radical and are not accepted today, his writing still offers a vivid glimpse into eighteenth-century attempts to explain language, history, and identity on a grand scale. He died in 1774.