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Wales comes from an early Germanic root which appears in modern German as Walesisch, and in Czech as Vlašsky.

The root is usually named wealas, and its basic meaning is foreign.

But in most German family languages the word wealas seems to have developed a specialist sense along the lines of people who have been influenced by Roman culture, but who are not ethnically Roman.

The German tribes who arrived in Britain from the 5th century on met western Brythons (the people who would eventually become the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Bretons) who had absorbed a great deal of Roman culture (and much of the Latin language) but clearly were not Latins.These people were obvious wealas, and eventually became the Welsh.

In Central Europe on the other hand the wealas were mainly northern Italians (who had also absorbed Roman culture while remaining ethnically distinct). So Vlašsky Dvur (Welsh Court) in Prague is the old Italian Sector.

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16y ago

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