Wales /ˈweɪlz/ (help·info) (Welsh: Cymru;[2] pronounced /ˈkəmrɨ/ (help·info)) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom,[3] bordered by England to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean[4] and Irish Sea to its west. It is also an electoral region of the European Union. Wales has a population estimated at three million and is officially bilingual, with both Welsh and English having equal status; the majority use English as their first language. Once a Celtic land, and considered one of the Celtic nations today, a distinct Welsh national identity emerged in the early fifth century, after the Roman withdrawal from Britain.[5] The 13th-century defeat of Llewelyn by Edward I completed the Anglo-Norman conquest of Wales and brought about centuries of English occupation. Wales was subsequently incorporated into England with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, creating the legal entity known today as England and Wales. However, distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century, and in 1881 the Welsh Sunday Closing Act became the first legislation applied exclusively to Wales. In 1955 Cardiff was proclaimed as national capital and in 1999 the National Assembly for Wales was created, which holds responsibility for a range of devolved matters. The capital Cardiff (Welsh: Caerdydd) is Wales's largest city with 317,500 people. For a period it was the biggest coal port in the world[6] and, for a few years before World War One, handled a greater tonnage of cargo than either London or Liverpool.[7] Two-thirds of the Welsh population live in South Wales, with another concentration in eastern North Wales. Many tourists have been drawn to Wales's "wild... and picturesque" landscapes.[8][9] From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the "land of song", attributable in part to the revival of the eisteddfod tradition.[10] Actors, singers and other artists are celebrated in Wales today, often achieving international success.[11] Cardiff is the largest media centre in the UK outside of London.[12] Llywelyn the Great founded the Principality of Wales in 1216. Just over a hundred years after the Edwardian Conquest, in the early 15th century Owain Glyndŵr briefly restored independence to what was to become modern Wales.[13][14] Traditionally the British Royal Family have bestowed the courtesy title of 'Prince of Wales' upon the heir apparent of the reigning monarch. Wales is sometimes referred to as the 'Principality of Wales', or just the 'principality',[15][16] although this has no modern geographical or constitutional basis. The English name Wales originates from the Germanic words Walh (singular) and Walha (plural). The Ænglisc-speaking Anglo-Saxons used the term Waelisc when referring to the Celtic Britons, and Wēalas when referring to their lands. The same etymology applies to walnut (meaning "foreign (Roman) nut") as well as the wall of Cornwall and Wallonia. Old Church Slavonic also borrowed the term from the Germanic, and it is the origin of the names Wallachia and its people, the Vlachs.[17][18][19] Cymru is the native name for the country, while Cymro (singular) and Cymry (plural) is the name for its people. This is likely derived from a (reconstructed) Brythonic word Combroges/Combrogos/Combrogi meaning "compatriots".[20] The name competed for a long time in Welsh literature with the older name Brythoniaid (Britons/Brythons). Only after 1100 did the former become as common as the latter.[21] The Latin name for Wales is Cambria and an archaic English name is Cymric – both deriving from the Brythonic. The names Cumbria and Cumberland are also derived from the Brythonic,[21] as these areas remained Brythonic-speaking much longer than the rest of England. There is also a medieval legend found in the Historia Regum Britanniae of Sieffre o Fynwy (Geoffrey of Monmouth) that derives Cymru from the name Camber, son of Brutus and (according to the legend) the eponymous King of Cymru – however, this is considered largely the fruit of Geoffrey's vivid imagination. Wales has been inhabited by modern humans for at least 29,000 years.[22] Although continuous human habitation dates from the end of the last ice age (between 12,000 and 10,000 Before Present (BP)), when mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Central Europe began to migrate to Great Britain. Wales was free of glaciers by about 10,250 BP and people would have been able to walk between Continental Europe and Great Britain until between about 7,000 and 6,000 BP, before the post glacial rise in sea level led to Great Britain becoming an island, and the Irish Sea forming to separate Wales and Ireland.[23][24] John Davies has theorised that the story of Cantre'r Gwaelod's drowning and tales in the Mabinogion, of the waters between Wales and Ireland being narrower and shallower, may be distant folk memories of this time.[23] The area became heavily wooded, restricting movement, and people also came to Great Britain by boat, from the Iberian Peninsula.[25] These Neolithic colonists integrated with the indigenous people, gradually changing their lifestyles from a nomadic life of hunting and gathering, to become settled farmers—the Neolithic Revolution.[23][26] They cleared the forests to establish pasture and to cultivate the land, developed new technologies such as ceramics and textile production, and they built cromlechs such as Pentre Ifan, Bryn Celli Ddu and Parc Cwm long cairn between about 5500 BP and 6000 BP, about 1,000 to 1,500 years before either Stonehenge or The Egyptian Great Pyramid of Giza was completed.[27][28][29][30][31] In common with people living all over Great Britain, over the following centuries the people living in what was to become known as Wales assimilated immigrants and exchanged ideas of the Bronze Age and Iron Age Celtic cultures. By the time of the Roman invasion of Britain the area of modern Wales had been divided among the tribes of the Deceangli, Ordovices, Cornovii, Demetae and Silures for centuries.[32] The first documented history of the area that would become Wales was in AD 48. Following attacks by the Silures of south-east Wales, in AD 47 and 48, the Roman historian Tacitus recorded that the governor of the new Roman province of Britannia "received the submission of the Deceangli" in north-east Wales.[33] A string of Roman forts was established across what is now the South Wales region, as far west as Carmarthen (Caerfyrddin; Latin: Maridunum), and gold was mined at Dolaucothi in Carmarthenshire. There is evidence that the Romans progressed even farther west. They also built the Roman legionary fortress at Caerleon (Latin: Isca Silurum), of which the magnificent amphitheatre is the best preserved in Britain. The Romans were also busy in northern Wales, and the mediaeval Welsh tale Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig (dream of Macsen Wledig) claims that Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig), one of the last western Roman Emperors, married Elen or Helen, the daughter of a Welsh chieftain from Segontium, present-day Caernarfon.[34] It was in the 4th century during the Roman occupation that Christianity was introduced to Wales. After the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410, much of the lowlands were overrun by various Germanic tribes.[35] However, Gwynedd, Powys, Dyfed and Seisyllg, Morgannwg, and Gwent emerged as independent Welsh successor states. They endured, in part because of favourable geographical features such as uplands, mountains, and rivers and a resilient society that did not collapse with the end of the Roman civitas. This tenacious survival by the Romano-Britons and their descendants in the western kingdoms was to become the foundation of what we now know as Wales. With the loss of the lowlands, England's kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, and later Wessex, wrestled with Powys, Gwent, and Gwynedd to define the frontier between the two peoples. Having lost much of what is now the West Midlands to Mercia in the sixth and early seventh centuries, a resurgent late-seventh-century Powys checked Mercian advancement. Aethelbald of Mercia, looking to defend recently acquired lands, had built Wat's Dyke. According to John Davies, this endeavour may have been with Powys king Elisedd ap Gwylog's own agreement, however, for this boundary, extending north from the valley of the River Severn to the Dee estuary, gave Oswestry (Welsh: Croesoswallt) to Powys.[36] King Offa of Mercia seems to have continued this consultative initiative when he created a larger earthwork, now known as Offa's Dyke (Welsh: Clawdd Offa). Davies wrote of Cyril Fox's study of Offa's Dyke: In the planning of it, there was a degree of consultation with the kings of Powys and Gwent. On the Long Mountain near Trelystan, the dyke veers to the east, leaving the fertile slopes in the hands of the Welsh; near Rhiwabon, it was designed to ensure that Cadell ap Brochwel retained possession of the Fortress of Penygadden." And for Gwent Offa had the dyke built "on the eastern crest of the gorge, clearly with the intention of recognizing that the River Wye and its traffic belonged to the kingdom of Gwent.[36] However, Fox's interpretations of both the length and purpose of the Dyke have been questioned by more recent research.[37] Offa's Dyke largely remained the frontier between the Welsh and English, though the Welsh would recover by the 12th century the area between the Dee and the Conwy known then as the Perfeddwlad. By the eighth century, the eastern borders with the Anglo-Saxons had broadly been set. Following the successful examples of Cornwall in 722 and Brittany in 865, the Britons of Wales made their peace with the Vikings and asked the Norsemen to help the Britons fight the Anglo-Saxons of Mercia to prevent an Anglo-Saxon conquest of Wales. In 878 AD the Britons of Wales unified with the Vikings of Denmark to destroy an Anglo-Saxon army of Mercians. Like Cornwall in 722, this decisive defeating of the Saxons gave Wales some decades of peace from Anglo-Saxon attack. In 1063, the Welsh prince Gruffydd ap Llywelyn made an alliance with Norwegian Vikings against Mercia which, as in 878 AD was successful, and the Saxons of Mercia defeated. As with Cornwall and Brittany, Viking aggression towards the Saxons/Franks ended any chance of the Anglo-Saxons/Franks conquering their Celtic neighbours.