author
1722–1774
A Welsh lawyer with a passion for language, he became known for bold ideas about the origins of speech and for trying to connect Welsh with the earliest history of nations. His work sits at the lively crossroads of law, philology, and eighteenth-century speculation.
Born in 1722, Rowland Jones was a Welsh lawyer and philologist. He is chiefly remembered for his energetic, highly original writing on language, especially his attempts to argue for the great antiquity and importance of Welsh.
His best-known book is The Origin of Language and Nations (1764), a work that reflects the curiosity and confidence of eighteenth-century scholarship. In it, he advanced sweeping theories about the history of peoples and tongues, linking language study with early history and national identity.
Although many of his linguistic ideas are now seen as speculative rather than reliable scholarship, his work remains interesting as part of the history of philology in Wales. He died in 1774.