Fascinating Welch Etymology all over English

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-the-English-called-Sassenachs-by-the-Scottish

about the origin of the words “Wales” and “Welsh” (and Wallace, Welch, and others) as deriving from the Saxon “Walas” (others spell it walhaz), it may be interesting to note that this word was preceded by a glottis stop, which in Latin languages was rendered as a “g” and gave origin to the Latin name for Wales (Galles), the name of the Celtic peoples of France (Gauls) and the region now Nation of Portugal (port-of-Welsh sort of).

The “Gloses of Kassel”, considered the first document in Reto-Romansch, is a collection of bilingual glosses in VIII Century Latin and Bavarian German, intended probably to help the German masters communicate with their Romansch servants. In this document, the Romans are called “Walha” (and are addressed as “tole”, fools)

In modern Schweiz Deutsch and Tyrolean Deutsch, the word “welsch” stands for “uneducated person from the countryside” or simpleton.

Why am I so interested in the etymology of these words? Well have a look at my surname…

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Apr 7, 2018 · 21 upvotes

This is all fascinating. And it explains the French for Wales, Pays des Galles. Thank you very much.

Paul Bennett

Jun 22, 2018 · 5 upvotes including Mark Simon Hockey

And also William / Gwilym / Guillaume

Fiona Vian

Sep 4 · 1 upvote from Mark Simon Hockey

French has often “borrowed” words which in English begin with w, to render them with g or gu : war => guerre; wasp => guêpe (the circumflex replaces an ancient s); wardrobe => garde-robe, warden => gardien, Welsh => Gallois, and of course William => Guillaume. All from the same period, Middle Ages. BTW don’t forget Galicia, the Celtic part of Spain; the people there are called gallegos, which in Argentina means “a foreigner”, with a vaguely suspicious aura. Looks like heaps of people have got it in for the Welsh !! Thanks for your fantastic answers; it has helped me (a NZer) understand why my great-grandfather, Daniel Beale, was from Glasgow but Irish, with a Welsh wife. Didn’t seem logical, viewed from Down Under.

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Sep 4

Thank you. So many interesting comments and addendums from others like yourself has been wonderful to behold.

John Doyle

Apr 14 · 1 upvote

Who were the Picts exactly?

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Apr 14 · 5 upvotes including John Doyle

That’s a very good question John. The name has the same root as “picture” because they painted themselves, presumably with woad. “In Our Time” Melvyn Bragg has a programme on this question which I missed but my wife reported to me. I had thought they were a pre Celtic Bronze Age people (“beaker folk”) because their inheritance laws were matrilineal, radically different from the Brythonic Celts (or Welsh) who occupied the whole of Britain from Southern Caledonia to the channel. But nothing whatever of their language has survived and I believe there is now a consensus that they were another tribe of Welsh speaking ancient Britons.

The main point is that the were not Gaelic (= Irish) Celtic speakers, but were subdued and culturally eclipsed by the language and culture of the Irish invaders who turned Caledonia into Scotland.

I’m sorry I cannot be more precise but hesitancy and circumspection are not bad things where knowledge is so sparse.

Daniel Walker

Aug 5 · 3 upvotes

It’s not quite true nothing of their language survives… There are place names (some of them slap-bang in the heartland of the former Pictland), whose survival is further evidence of the idea of their assimilation, as opposed to their eradication. Take Aberdeen, for example. A very Welsh name, for a city in what would have once been a very Pictish region - ’confluence of the rivers Dee and the Don’ - the Gaelic equivalent would be something like Inverdeen.

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Aug 5 · 1 upvote

You are quite right of course Daniel, and other Welsh names like Abercrombie and Abernethy. And thank you, the “inver” analogy is most interesting.

But it is easy to give unwarranted weight to even flimsy evidence when there is simply nothing solid, and not a recorded letter to go on. We have this assumption that the Picts were Welsh, but we simply don’t know, they could have been Bronze Age beaker folk who had assimilated some elements of Welsh language and culture we simply don’t know anything much about them.

The same goes for the assumption that there “must” have been peaceful assimilation if the conquering Gaels retained Pictish place names. Of course it’s a nice, comfortable assumption to make, especially for those who self identify as the descendants of Gaels.

But it is entirely unwarranted as an assumption. There are over 30 English rivers that bear the Welsh name for “river” (Avon), and even SE England where we know from the Anglo Saxon chronicle as well as from Welsh sources, and the fact of the creation of Brittany by the fleeing Welsh, that the greatest massacres and depopulation of Welsh speakers occurred, the very name of the new Jutish kingdom, Kent, was adopted from the Canti tribe as was the name of the invader’s Capital (Canterbury).

So I really don’t buy into this assumption either. History is rarely as comfortable as we would like it to be, and I am not saying you might not be right, I’m just saying that I don’t think the scant evidence of a few place names can justify the heavy burden of conclusions that you place upon them.

But of course, you might be basing your statements upon other more compelling evidence that I know nothing about. And you have already shown a greater knowledge of goidelic v Brythonic Celtic speech than me, so although I decline to accept your conclusion, I do so with the humility of knowing that you might be right!

Daniel Walker

Aug 5 · 1 upvote

It’s not just Aberdeen, but a whole host of places like Abercrombie, Abernethy - plus corruptions like Applecross and Arbroath. This whole ‘where streams meet’ word, is used by linguists as one of those indicators for where the transition between where the two languages originally met and diverged - much like the place names either side of the Danelaw are in modern English linguistic archeology.

In fact there may have been an equivalent of the Danelaw (a ‘Gaelaw’, if you will) in place across central Scotland around the same time that separated these two regions.

In both cases, it seems fair to say that the cultures on either sides of the divide eventually assimilated. There’s only so much throwing infants onto pikes, that any army can sustain until PTSD sets in, even if you believe those stories, in the first place.

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Aug 5

Much of what you say Daniel I wholeheartedly agree with. There is a huge gap between eradication and assimilation. For example women are rarely eradicated, X chromosomes are known to survive in conquered populations far better than do their Y chromosomes. And of course enslavement is a particularly effective form of assimilation.

Fiona Vian

Sep 4 · 1 upvote from Mark Simon Hockey

Could I venture to add something about the Welsh word Avon ? Here in France there are many placenames incorporating various versions of Avon/Aven : Pont-Aven, Avène, Avon - les Roches, Avon - la Pèze, Avenas, Avenay, St - Aventin, St - Avé…and would you believe, Avignon. When working with the documentalist at the Popes’ Palace in Avignon, which dates from the late Middle Ages, I came across some ancient texts describing a swirling whirlpool the locals called “un aven” in the river Rhône, ie a river in the river, and which was subsequently called Aven - Ion, ie John’s whirlpool, or grotto filled with water, and which the Romans latinised into Avenio. Incidentally this whirlpool was inbetween Aven - Ion and a place still called Les Angles, which was settled by a fiercely barbarian tribe (naturellement !) of Angles. A Welsh diaspora ?

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Sep 4

Please venture as much as you like. All quite fascinating. I had no idea. Thank you.

Joan-Carles Martí i Casanova

Sep 26 · 1 upvote from Mark Simon Hockey

Avenc is the Catalan and Occitan (Provençal) word for “gully”. Hope this understandable Catalan text (DCVB) helps: Etim.: segons J. Hubschmid (ELH, i, 145), el cat. avenc i l'occità avenc vénen del gàl·lic *abinko-, ‘cavitat subterrània on es reuneixen les aigües’ (procedent del celta

*abonā,

‘aigua’).

Fiona Vian

Sep 27

Moltes gràcies, Joan-Carles. I suppose gàl-lic means Welsh, or does it mean Gaelic in a wider sense ? (there being Scots, Welsh, and Irish Gaelic, not to mention the language in the land of the gaita in your country ! Occitan and Provençal are not exactly the same language; Provençal, as represented by Mistral, is more Italianised.

Gavin Hill

Jul 13 · 2 upvotes including Mark Simon Hockey

This excellent book challenges some of the claims you have made throughout this thread mr Hockey, including the very origins of the modern Scots people too.

It also proves that there is in fact no consensus amongst historians that the Gaels ‘came over from Ireland’ and settled as claimed and I suggest to all interested in the subject matter that is well worth a read…

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Oct 16

Only just seen this too Gavin. I will read it. So kind of you.

John Doyle

Apr 14 · 1 upvote

Thanks. As a child, here in Aus, the picts and the scots were always mentioned together with no one being able to explain them. Mysterious was it. Good there is some news there.

Gavin Hill

Jul 13 · 2 upvotes including Mark Simon Hockey

This might help Mark, certainly much more apolitical, and more factual…

Adobe Document Cloud

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Oct 16

Gavin, so kind of you to have posted this to me. I have only just seen it. Begun reading, quite fascinating. Thank you so much.

James Wellings

Jan 1 · 6 upvotes

It is all fascinating, and confirms for how long we Europeans have been interlinked. To interject a distressing item of modernity, why is Britain lea ving the EU. I hope Mrs may reads this string!!

Julie Gregory

Jul 27

And the Spanish name for Wales - Gales (Gal -es)

Kevin May

Jan 11 · 11 upvotes including Mark Simon Hockey

And the 'wall' part of Cornwall comes from the same root. Very interesting.

Mark Simon Hockey

Original Author · Jan 29 · 7 upvotes including Kevin May

Thank you Kevin. I have only just seen this. Blindingly obvious, now you mention it, but it had never occurred to me. And I have a house in Saltash Passage in Plymouth, which looks out onto Cornwall across the Tamar. How often we miss things staring us in the face! I am very grateful to you.

Redwald Cuthberting

Sep 5 · 2 upvotes from Mark Simon Hockey and Kevin May

Yes, cornwealas whence also cornwallis’ surname of the American war of independence fame. They were also called west wealas ‘foreigners to the west.’

Gill Beswick

Mar 14 · 7 upvotes including Kevin May

Just remember that “Cornwall” is the English name. The proper (Celtic) name is Kernow, and we (well, some of us!) speak Kernewek, not Welsh. Incidentally, we call the English Sowsnek, which also means Saxons.

Alexander Thomson

Mar 23 · 4 upvotes

That is interesting! Despite the difference in spelling Sowsnek and Sassenach are startlingly similar given the large geographical difference.

Bethan Williams

May 9 · 1 upvote from Mark Simon Hockey

As I believe does the ‘Wall’ in the town of Wallasey, owing in part that it would have been an island then and not part of the Wirral peninsula. Fascinating stuff!

Redwald Cuthberting

Sep 5 · 2 upvotes including Mark Simon Hockey

Walton is one too from wealh ‘foreign’ and tun ’settlement’ whence town and ton. Tun was said toon… like cu was coo, and hus was hoos in Englisc(old English). Mus was moos. Cow,house and mouse in standard new English…

Redwald Cuthberting

Sep 5 · 2 upvotes including Mark Simon Hockey

Wealas is nomnitive plural of nomnitive singular wealh ‘wey-alch’ and wealh is reconstructed as walhaz in Proto-Germanic. A loan word into Germanic from the name of a Gaulish tribe recorded in Latin as ‘Volcae.’

The v in classical Latin was said as a w.

The h said like the ch in German: ‘nacht’. See old English (Englisc): ‘niht’ also spelled neaht, where in new English it has a silent gh, and in Lowland Scots which was called ‘Inglis’ due to its Anglian origin it is ‘nicht.’

Tim Slater

Oct 9 · 2 upvotes from Mark Simon Hockey and Luca Guala

And the walnut (German Walnuß) was originally “welsche Nuß”, and “welsch” was until very recently a (sometimes pejorative) German word meaning “foreign”.

And the Swiss Canton Valais/Wallis