Lessico
Welsch
In English, of course, we use the terms "Wales" and "Welsh" to refer to the country, inhabitants and langauge of the country to the west of England. The Anglo-Saxon invaders, when encountering the indigenous British, labeled them "wae:las" (foreigners), which evolved into the current country name. The adjective was "wae:lisc" (foreign), which evolved into "Welsh". Of course, the sense of "foreign" has been totally bleached from these words since. German uses cognate terms to refer to the French-speaking Swiss: "Welschschweizer" (French Swiss) and Welschschweiz (French Switzerland or "Suisse romande"). (The Welsh are referred to as "Waliser" and their language as "Walisisch".) In an older sense, the adjective "welsch" denotes southern Europeans or the Latin language as in "welschsprachig" (of the romance languages); in Austria, "welsch" is apparently used as an abusive term for Italians, similar to the North American "Wop".
Wop: immigrante negli USA di origine centro o sudeuropea (specialmente italiano). Parola di origine sconosciuta del XX secolo.
Altra interpretazione etimologica di Welsh: a name derived from the continental Volcae, which came to be applied indiscriminately to all Western European inhabitants of the Roman Empire. In Britain the word Welsh was probably first applied to speakers of Latin; on the Continent, variants such as Walloon, Wallon, Waalsch, Welsch, Velsk, and Vlach are still applied to the French, the Italians and the Romanians.
Volci, in latino Volcae: antica popolazione celtica stanziata tra la Garonna e il Rodano e divisa nei due gruppi degli Arecomici, situati nell'attuale Linguadoca con capitale a Nemausus (Nîmes), e dei Tectosagi, occupanti la regione tra Tolosa e Narbona con capitale a Tolosa. Gruppi di Tectosagi si trovavano anche nella Galazia in Asia Minore.
da Summa Gallicana
welsch = foreign, Italian, French, but disdainful, as the Italians call Terrone (big earth) an inhabitant of the South, may be because frequently here you find a dark skin, dark and brown as the earth (not cited by Cortelazzo, I have thought myself this etymology in this moment)
Welscher Hahn = turkey (or = Guinea fowl?), as called by Gottlob Richter, i.e. foreign fowl
Welschhuhn, even nowadays it means turkey, the turkey only
Welschland is the Italy and even the French Switzerland, i.e. all the countries different from Germany, as the Romans called Gallus a foreign people, because gallo and allo are Indo-Europeans words, meaning foreign (Joze Harrieta, La Lingua Arpitana, 1976). In Greek àllos = different, another, i.e. alias also used in English (Corti, 1996!!!).
Welschkorn = maize, and in this way do we can suppose that the maize becomes from Italy and Switzerland? Not, it’s foreign!
