ONE WORD, TEN LANDS
Wales and Wallachia: one word at two ends of Europe
Welsh and Vlach descend from the same word-family, along different routes: a kinship of words, never of peoples. Their common ancestor, *walhaz, meant “the foreigner”. You carry it across the map, following the name, not kinship: who called whom what, and what each called themselves.
- *WALHAZ
- “the foreigner, the Roman” — a reconstructed form, marked with an asterisk
- 976 · 11TH C.
- the event is from 976; the account, from over a hundred years later
- 1185
- the revolt of Bulgarians and Vlachs leads to the Second Bulgarian Empire
How the word changes shape at the border:
The root: what the asterisk means
Everything starts from a word nobody ever wrote down
Proto-Germanic *walhaz meant “the foreigner” — more exactly “the Roman, the Romance-speaker, the romanised Celt”. It survives in Wales and Welsh, in Cornwall, in names like Walworth — and, in some cases, Walton. The asterisk tells the truth at a glance: the form is reconstructed by linguists, attested in no document.
The word in England: price and map
The laws of Ine of Wessex (late 7th century) price the Welsh by land: 120 shillings with a full hide, 80 with half a hide, 60 with no land — against 200 for an English ceorl; a Welshman with five hides, though, rose to syxhynde, at 600 shillings (ed. Attenborough, 1922: Ine 23–24, 32–33). The root also stayed on England's map: in the KEPN dictionary, Walton-on-Thames is “the Britons' farm” (walh + tūn), and Walworth “the Britons' enclosure” (walh + worð) — with the caution that not every Walton comes from here.
Volcae → *walhaz: the standard account, with its hedge
Where does *walhaz come from? The standard account derives it from the name Volcae, the Celtic tribe named by Caesar (Ouólkai in Strabo and Ptolemy): it is assumed the term named the Volcae in particular, because applying Grimm's law produces *Walh-. Bosworth–Toller points to the Volcae too, s.v. wealh — and Duden gives the same path for wal(a)hisc. “Assumed” belongs to the claim: direct proof is missing.
On a bracteate from Tjurkö, some read the form walhakurne — a possible early echo of the same root. It remains a hypothesis, never proof. HYPOTHESIS
The centre of the piece: two mirrors
Wales and Wallachia: the same pattern, at two ends of Europe
This is a kinship of names, never a demonstrated kinship between the Welsh and the Romanians. In both cases, a name given from outside became the land's international name, while its people kept another name for themselves. The two panels tell the same story in the same order: who gave the name, which name each kept.
Wales / Cymru
THE NAME FROM OUTSIDE
Wales
Wales and Welsh come from Old English Wealh (singular), Wēalas (plural) — a descendant of *walhaz. English kept the root in Cornwall and Walworth too — plus some places called Walton.
THE NAME FROM INSIDE
Cymru
Cymry (the people), Cymru (the land) — from Brythonic combrogi, “fellow-countrymen”, probably in use before the 7th century.
Wallachia / Țara Românească
THE NAME FROM OUTSIDE
Wallachia
“Wallachia” is an exonym: Romanians called their country Țara Românească, although the form Valahia or Vlahia appears in some Romanian texts. The neighbours added Havasalföld and Havaselve (Hungarian) and Transalpina (chancery Latin).
THE NAME FROM INSIDE
Țara Românească
Țara Românească — the name from inside. Muntenia names the eastern part; the spelling Țara Rumânească belongs to other centuries.
Wales and Țara Românească (Oltenia and Muntenia), at the same scale. Today's outlines, not medieval borders.
One word, ten lands
Carry the word across the map
Ten pins, a single word — but never a single road. Travel from west to east: at each stop you learn who called whom what, in which language and with which sense. Arcs start from a representative city of the people who gave the name and end in the land named. Everything the mouse does, the keyboard does too.
place 1 of 10
Wales
Wales, Welsh < Old English Wēalas < *walhaz
The name from inside: Cymry / Cymru < combrogi, “fellow-countrymen”
Who named them: the English (Anglo-Saxons)
The sense: “the foreigners” — the romanised neighbours
Source: Bosworth–Toller, s.v. wealh; Attenborough 1922
place 2 of 10
Cornwall
Cornwall < Corn + Wealas
The name from inside: Kernow (Cornish)
Who named them: the English
The sense: the land of the “foreign” Cornovii — the root on England's map
Source: Bosworth–Toller, s.v. wealh
place 3 of 10
Wallonia
Walloon < *walha
The name from inside: Walon (Walloon)
Who named them: the Germanic speakers
The sense: “the Celtic and Latin speakers”
Source: EN-wiki Walloons §Etymology
place 4 of 10
Romandy / French-speaking Switzerland
Swiss Ger. welsch, die welsche Schweiz < OHG wal(a)hisc, from the *walhiska- family
The name from inside: Romandie / Suisse romande
Who named them: the German-speaking Swiss
The sense: “the French-speaking part of Switzerland” — the current Swiss sense, not the Romansh area
Source: Duden, s.v. welsch
place 5 of 10
Italy / Włochy
Pol. Włochy, Włosi; Hung. Olasz, Olaszország; Sloven. Lahi
The name from inside: Italia, italiani
Who named them: the Poles, Hungarians and Slovenes
The sense: a living exonym for Italy and Italians
Source: EN-wiki *Walhaz
place 6 of 10
Moravian Wallachia
Moravské Valašsko — the name comes from the exonym “Vlach”
The name from inside: Valaši (Slavicised today)
Who named them: the Slav neighbours
The sense: the “Vlachs” at the end of the Carpathian migration
Source: EN-wiki Moravian Wallachia
place 7 of 10
Pannonia / Oláh
Hung. oláh (“Vlach, Romanian”), olasz (“Italian”)
The name from inside: român
Who named them: the Hungarians
The sense: from Slavic Vlah/Voloh, through contact
Source: Boba 1995, after Kniezsa 1955
place 8 of 10
Balkans / Vlah
Gr. Vláhoi/Blachoi, Alb. vllah, Slav. Vlah/Voloh
The name from inside: rumân, armãn
Who named them: the Greeks, Slavs and Albanians
The sense: first “the Romanics”; later also “shepherd, nomad”
Source: Boba 1995; Dudek 2021
place 9 of 10
Wallachia
Wallachia; Zemli Ungro-Vlahiskoi; Havasalföld; Transalpina
The name from inside: Țara Românească
Who named them: every neighbour, each in their own tongue
The sense: “the land of the Vlachs”, said from outside
Source: EN-wiki Wallachia §Etymology
place 10 of 10
Eflak
Ulak, Ilak, Iflak → Ott. Eflâk, Eflâk Prensliği
The name from inside: Țara Românească
Who named them: the Muslim sources, the Ottoman chancery
The sense: “Wallachia”, plus the Rüsûm-i Eflakiye tax: one sheep and one lamb per household, on St George's Day
Source: EN-wiki Vlachs §Ottoman Empire
One word, ten lands
Now you choose
Choose a place: who called whom what
The word's tree
Choose a branch: it lights the places it joins
The tree, not the road: solid line = direct descent; dashed line = borrowing or a reconstructed form. The labels tell how firm each link stands: ATTESTED RECONSTRUCTED SUPPORTED BORROWING HYPOTHESIS DISPUTED LATE SOURCE PROBABLE ETYMOLOGY
The Byzantine hinge: six stops
The first medieval testimonies about the Vlachs
Six stops with events before 1100. Each keeps the year of the deed apart from the age of the telling: a late testimony about an old deed is never a contemporary record.
A record tells us a word was already in use on that date; it rarely tells us the year it was borrowed. And the reverse: the date of an event is never the date the word was put on paper.
976
Prespa–Kastoria LATE SOURCE
An event from 976, told late
Βλάχων ὁδιτῶν
At the “Beautiful Oaks” (Καλαὶ δρῦς), between Prespa and Kastoria, David of Bulgaria is killed by Vlachs (Thurn, p. 329). 976 is the year of the deed, not of the pen: the chronicle was written at the end of the 11th century, over a hundred years after the deed, and the text of Skylitzes was interpolated early (Wortley 2010, introduction). Βλάχων ὁδιτῶν means “Vlach wayfarers”, not caravan guides: Thurn's index gives vagantes.
sighting 1 of 6
~985
Hellas
Command of the Vlachs of Hellas
ἀρχὴν τῶν Βλάχων Ἑλλάδος
Kekaumenos quotes Basil II's letter to his grandfather Nikulitzas, from the fourth year of the reign (dated ~985 by Dudek, after Litavrin): instead of the exkoubitores, he receives ἀρχὴν τῶν Βλάχων Ἑλλάδος — command of the “Vlachs of Hellas”. The letter is contemporary with the deed, but it is quoted by Kekaumenos, writing in 1075–1078.
sighting 2 of 6
1020
Ohrid
All the Vlachs, a single care
all the Vlachs
Basil II's second chrysobull (May 1020) for Ohrid: the Vlachs of all Bulgaria answer to the archbishop, including the kanonikon tax, paid as under the old rulers (Miron–Boba; Komatina 2023; Dudek 2021). One administrative sentence showing how widespread those so named already were.
sighting 3 of 6
1027
Bari
The Bari muster-roll
Vlachorum
The Annales Barenses list the army raised for Sicily under “Ispo chetoniti” (Orestes the chamberlain): Russians, Guandali, Turks, Bulgarians, VLACHS, Macedonians “and others” (MGH SS V, p. 53). A list of contingents, not of recruitment: Vlachs and Macedonians are distinct troops. The chronicle gets the year wrong — Basil II had died in December 1025.
sighting 4 of 6
1066
Thessaly
The revolt of Thessaly
Nikoulitzas
Kekaumenos writes in the Strategikon (1075–1078) about the revolt of summer 1066 — the editors' dating, from the comet and the reign of Constantine X Doukas — led by Nikoulitzas Delphinas. The leaders meet in the house of Beriboes, and cattle and women are moved to the mountains of Bulgaria, from April to September.
sighting 5 of 6
1094
Zygos
Pudilos and the paths
Πουδίλος
In spring 1094, a certain Πουδίλος, a Vlach notable, tells the emperor by night that the Cumans are crossing the Danube; then the Vlachs show the Cumans the paths over the Zygos (Anna Komnene, Alexiad X.2–3; dated 1094 after Chalandon's campaign chronology).
sighting 6 of 6
The Dacians of Kekaumenos: a verdict of scholarship
Kekaumenos calls the Vlachs descendants of the Dacians and Bessi, crushed by Trajan, Decebalus included. The modern verdict reads an antiquarian archaism here, a play on classical names for contemporary people (Strategikon, ch. 187; cf. Dudek 2021) — never evidence of origin. The claim and the verdict go together, always.
1185
The hinge of 1185: the revolt
Autumn 1185: Bulgarians and Vlachs rise
The cause was the tax — a new one, for Isaac II's wedding to Margaret of Hungary, exacted with the greatest severity around Anchialus and in the Balkan (Jireček, 1876). The traditional date of the beginning — 26 October, the feast day of St Demetrius, patron of the church at Tarnovo — is not in Choniates: it is a tradition of modern historiography, kept as such. The ending is well known: the Second Bulgarian Empire, at first the “Empire of Bulgarians and Vlachs” — Choniates' formula: τοῦ τῶν Βουλγάρων καὶ Βλάχων γένους ἐλευθερίαν.
The brothers Peter and Asen gather their people in the church of St Demetrius at Tarnovo, which they had built; hired prophets shout that the saint has left Norman-ravaged Thessalonica to join them. Peter is crowned tsar; Isaac marches against them in spring 1186.
13th–18th c.
The end of the road: Moravia
The last valley still called Wallachia
Moravské Valašsko — Moravian Wallachia — with Vsetín, Valašské Meziříčí and Rožnov pod Radhoštěm: the name comes from the exonym “Vlach”. The colonisation left words passed through Romanian in the Carpathian pastoral dialects — among them Mor. bača, whose full chain is on the sibling page — but not every shepherd word is a Romanian loan: Rom. colibă comes from Old Slavic koliba (DEX).
Shepherds called Vlachs moved up along the Carpathians to Moravia between the 13th and 18th centuries (Kamusella) and were gradually Slavicised. Why they set out, and exactly when — unclear to this day.
The arrow shows a direction, not a documented route.
The pastoral lexicon travels with the name: Moravian bryndza opens the sibling page, which follows the shepherd words out of Romanian.
The name from inside: rumân
Romanians called themselves rumâni, then români — from Latin romānus, “Roman”. Aromanians call themselves armãni. The 13th- and 14th-century testimonies date the attestation, never the birth of the word.
Meanwhile the exonym “Vlach” slid towards the social sense: shepherd, nomad — Slovaks say Valasi, Czechs Valaši. The name travelled because OTHERS carried it; every people kept its own name.
What stays uncertain
- How firm the Volcae → *walhaz derivation stands. “Assumed” belongs to the standard account (Bosworth–Toller points to the Volcae too, s.v. wealh; Duden gives the same path for wal(a)hisc); the specialist works of Schrijver and Ringe were not consulted.
- How usable the 1027 Bari list is: Olajos (1988) disputes it as a source for Romanian history; the article was not consulted; the dispute is flagged, not settled.
- The Greek text of the Ohrid charters (ed. Gelzer, 1900) was not consulted; the source here is the Miron–Boba–Komatina–Dudek chain.
- The exact date of the 1185 outbreak: 26 October is modern historiography's tradition, not in Choniates or Jireček.
- How much of the Moravian pastoral lexicon truly passed through Romanian: bača yes (the chain is on the sibling page), colibă no (DEX: from Old Slavic koliba). The exact start of the migration: the Lozovan–Kamusella primary sources were not consulted, and why and when stays “unclear”.
- The genetics sentence quoted in passing by the sources: a single study demands caution, so it is not used here.
- Vlad the Impaler has no place here: the story follows the name, not the reigns — the exonym “Vlach” needs no Dracula.
Sometimes the most honest etymology reads: not known yet.
The name arrived; the people keep their names
You carried a single word through ten lands. The sibling story follows the shepherd words out of Romanian — from the sheepfold, across the Carpathians.
Sources
Sources first, then scholarship; what stayed on Wikipedia is labelled as such. Every risky claim points at its source.
Sources and editions
- Skylitzes, ed. Thurn (CFHB 5), p. 329 — scan
- Skylitzes, trans. Wortley (CUP 2010) — Open Library record
- Kekaumenos, ed. Wassiliewsky–Jernstedt (1896) — scan
- Anna Komnene, ed. Leib II, book X — scan
- Alexiad X, trans. Dawes (1928) — Fordham
- Choniates, ed. van Dieten (CFHB 11.1) — scan
- Annales Barenses, MGH SS V, pp. 53–57 — dMGH
- Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings (1922) — scan
- Bosworth–Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. wealh — scan
Scholarship old and new
- Boba 1995, Vlachs in Central Europe — Szeged PDF
- Dudek 2021, Własi w Bizancjum — DOI
- Komatina 2023, Ohrid charters — DOI
- Jireček 1876, Geschichte der Bulgaren — scan
- Chalandon 1900, Alexis Ier — scan
- Vásáry 2005, Cumans and Tatars — Google Books
- KEPN: Walton-on-Thames; Walworth — Nottingham
- GPC: Cymro < *Combrogos — Aberystwyth
- Duden, welsch: the Swiss sense + the Volcae origin
- National Museum of Denmark: age and origin of the Gundestrup cauldron
- DEX: colibă < Old Slavic koliba — dexonline
Still Wikipedia — labelled as such
- *walhaz, Volcae, the *walhiska- family (EN-wiki)
- Walloon < *walha (EN-wiki)
- Wallachia, Țara Românească, Eflâk (EN-wiki)
- Moravian Wallachia, the Carpathian migration (EN-wiki)
The map
- Natural Earth 50m: countries and rivers (public domain)
- geoBoundaries: Wales and Wallonia, ADM1 (CC BY 4.0)
- Atlasul istoriei României: Oltenia and Muntenia
Sibling pages
- The travelling cheese: the shepherd words
- Romanian words in other languages: what “Vlach” means in the neighbours' dictionaries
Type: Fraunces, Source Serif 4, EB Garamond (Greek) and Atkinson Hyperlegible, under the SIL Open Font Licence. Outlines: Natural Earth (public domain), geoBoundaries (CC BY 4.0), Atlasul istoriei României.