So
the Welsh refer to themselves as the Cymru and their language as
Cymric; “Welsh” comes from the Old English word “waelsc,” which meant “foreigners.”
Invading somebody else’s country and calling the people you just ran out “foreigners” is one of the oldest English traditions.
On
a similar note, the Irish word for the English language is “Bearla.”
The Irish word for language in general is “Bearlagair.” One of the most
insidious relics of colonialism, that is; the natives speak
god-knows-what whilst the colonizers speak Language.
Actually no, not at all, in fact. The Romans called them Britones, a Latinization of the Gallic Brittos, “inhabitants of Britain”; so the Romans invaded but called them what they called themselves. Welsh, from Waelisc (Wylisc in the West Saxon dialect and Welisc in the Anglian dialect) is definitely an Old English word developed from the Proto-Germanic *Walkhiskaz that only became applied to the inhabitants of Britain after the Anglo-Saxon migrations of the 5th and 6th centuries. It was the English who invaded and called them foreigners.
sleepliving 