Origin and history of Welsh

Middle English Welsh, from Old English Wielisc, Wylisc (West Saxon), Welisc, Wælisc (Anglian and Kentish) "foreign; British (not Anglo-Saxon), Welsh, native of Wales" (Celtic land which maintained its independence from England until 1282-3); also "not free, servile;" from Wealh, Walh "Celt, Briton, Welshman, non-Germanic foreigner."

In Tolkien's definition, "common Gmc. name for a man of what we should call Celtic speech," but also applied in continental Germanic languages to speakers of Latin, hence Old High German Walh, Walah "Celt, Roman, Gaulish," and Old Norse Val-land "France," Valir "Gauls, non-Germanic inhabitants of France" (Danish vælsk "Italian, French, southern"). It is from Proto-Germanic *Walkhiskaz, from a Celtic tribal name represented by Latin Volcæ (Caesar) "ancient Celtic tribe in southern Gaul."

As a noun, "the Britons," also "the Welsh language," both in Old English.

The Germanic adjective also survives in Wales, Cornwall, Walloon, walnut, and in surnames Walsh and Wallace. It was borrowed in Old Church Slavonic as vlachu, and applied to the Romanians, hence Wallachia.

Among the English, Welsh was used disparagingly of inferior or substitute things (such as Welsh cricket "louse" (1590s); Welsh comb "thumb and four fingers" (1796), and compare welch (v.)). Welsh mutton (1771), however, from sheep raised in Wales, was a choice delicacy.

Welshry "the Welsh collectively" is from mid-14c.