Welsh people

:This article is about the Welsh as an ethnic group. For information about residents or nationals of Wales, see demographics of Wales.

History

The names that the earliest inhabitants of Wales had for themselves is not recorded.

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The tribes the Romans encountered in their time in Britain were known to the Romans as Ordovices, the Demetae, the Silures and the Deceangli: all Celtic tribes which had arrived in Britain from Europe over the preceding centuries. Many people in Wales today regard themselves as Celtic, asserting a link ultimately back to these tribes. When theRoman legions departed Britain around 400, a Romano-British culture remained in the areas the Romans had settled, and the pre-Roman cultures in others.

Related Topics:
Romans - Time in Britain - Ordovices - Demetae - Silures - Deceangli - Celt - Celtic - Roman legions departed Britain - 400 - Romano-British

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The people in what is now Wales continued to speak Brythonic languages with additions from Latin, as did other Celts in the other areas of Great Britain. The surviving poem Y Gododdin is in Old Welsh despite the Gododdin (aka Votadini) tribe being based around current lower Scotland and Northumberland, demonstrating the geographical reach of these languages. John Davies places the change from Brythonic to Welsh between 400 and 700.

Related Topics:
Brythonic languages - Latin - Great Britain - Gododdin - 400 - 700

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As the Angles, Saxons and Jutes settled Great Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, the territory of the Celts shrank into the north and west, one of these territories starting to form the basis of Wales as a country. Eventually Offa's Dyke was erected in the mid-eighth century, forming a barrier between two peoples.

Related Topics:
Angles, Saxons and Jutes - Offa's Dyke - Eighth century

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The process of coming to think of themselves as Welsh is not clear. There is plenty of evidence of the use of the term Brythoniad (Britons); by contrast, the earliest use of the word Kymry (referring not to the people but to the land—and possibly to northern Britain rather than to present Wales) is found in a poem dated to about 633. Only gradually did Cymru (the land) and Cymry (the people) come to supplant Brython. Although the Welsh language was certainly used at the time, Gwyn A. Williams would argue that in fact even at the time of the erection of Offa's Dyke, the people to its west saw themselves as Roman, citing the number of Latin inscriptions still being made into the eighth century.

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The word Cymry derived from Brythonic combrogi, meaning fellow-countrymen (J Davies), and thus Cymru carries a sense of "land of fellow-countrymen", "our country". The name "Wales", however, comes from a Germanic root word meaning "stranger" or "foreigner," and as such is related to the names of several other European regions where Germanic peoples came into contact with non-Germanic cultures, including Wallonia (Belgium), Valais (Switzerland), and Wallachia (Romania), as well as the "-wall" of Cornwall. (In return, the Welsh words for the English people and the English language today mean Saxon.)

Related Topics:
Germanic - Root word - Wallonia - Valais - Wallachia - Romania - Cornwall

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There were subsequent further influxes of people into the country. After the Norman Conquest, several Normans encouraged immigration into their new lands; the Landsker line dividing the Pembrokeshire "Englishry" and "Welshry" is still detectable today. The terms Englishry and Welshry are used similarly about Gower.

Related Topics:
Norman Conquest - Landsker line - Pembrokeshire - Gower

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