Re: Names of countries and national languages
| From: | Daniel Prohaska <daniel@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, September 24, 2007, 16:19 |
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I doubt it ever meant "foreigner" even in Old English. I think "Welsh" was
the Germanic word for "Celt", as pointed out either from the Celtic word for
the people the Romans called <Volcae> or borrowed from Latin.
It is too much of a coincidence that German dialect speakers in the
Germanic-Romance contact zone (formally the Germanic-Celtic contact zone)
would call the Romance speakers "Welsch", while their Slavonic neighbours
are called "Windisch" or "Wendisch". If "Welsch" were the ford for
"foreigner", wouldn't the have considered the Slavic speakers "foreign" as
well?
Dan
From: Lars Finsen
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 5:04 PM
Den 23. sep. 2007 kl. 11.03 skrev Jeff Rollin:
> And of course there are the names "Wales" and "Welsh", which come
> from an old Anglo-Saxon word for "foreigner"
"The word is actually Celtic in origin. The Volcai was a Celtic nation who
for some time dwelt in the vicinity of the Germanic tribes in continental
Europe. Enough to make their name become a generic term for 'foreigner'.
Maybe the Welsh are too rash in rejecting it, since it actually *is* a
Celtic word, at least in origin.
LEF"
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