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 Walsh is among
the five most numerous surnames in Ireland, found throughout the
country. There are concentrations of Walshes in Leinster in counties
Kilkenny and Wexford, in Connacht in counties Mayo and Galway, and in
Munster in counties Cork and Waterford. Walsh is a semi-translation of
the Irish surname Breathnach, meaning ‘Welsh’ or ‘Breton’, also
sometimes anglicised as ‘Brannagh’. This alludes to the Cambro-Gaelic
origin of the Walsh families. The name came into use to describe the
Welsh people who came to Ireland during the Cambro-Norman invasions.
Very early their surname in Gaelic was Breathnach, the Irish word for
Briton or Welsh, which was later to become anglicized as Brannagh and
Walsh(e).
The Walsh surname has the same historical origin as Wallace, but arrived
at its present form by a more circuitous route. Wallace comes from the
Anglo-Norman-French le waleis, meaning simply ‘the foreigner’ or
‘the stranger’, which was used in different parts of Britain to
denote the Scots, Welsh or Bretons, strangeness obviously being in the
eye of the beholder. In medieval Ireland the name Walsh was generally
used to mean ‘the Welshmen’, who arrived in the wake of the Cambro-Norman
invasion beginning in 1169 A.D., the first of the adventurers coming
from Wales.
Unlike most of the Anglo-Norman and Cambro-Norman families such as the
Burkes, the Fitzgeralds etc, who can trace their ancestry to a small
number of known individuals, the Walshes have many different origins,
since the name arose independently in many different places in Ireland.
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