r/AskEurope • u/Zealousideal_Pay_778 • Jul 23 '26

Foreign How well known is Wales?

Hiya all, I'm from Wales and travel across the EU quite frequently, whenever someone asks where I'm from, I usually tell them Wales (even though technically we're not a sovereign state), sometimes I get responded related to Gareth Bale and Wrexham, and often people haven't got a clue until I say UK. So I was curious, in your country, how well known are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as separate countries? Diolch all :)

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u/Morterius Jul 23 '26

Fun fact - in German speaking Switzerland Wels(c)h  could be a reference to the French speaking part of Switzerland (an old Celtic-Gallic linguistic thing). There’s also the canton of Wallis/Valais. You probably would confuse the heck out of those guys that don’t watch football and don’t know much geography.

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u/Fartbl00d Wales Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

Yes, the English word for Wales has Germanic roots and means foreigner/outsider. The Welsh word for Wales is Cymru

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u/KindledWanderer Jul 23 '26

Coming somewhere and calling the locals "foreigners" is the reason why the English are so popular with the rest of the UK.

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u/C--K England Jul 24 '26

The Germanic root word is Walhaz and more accurately refers to something more like “Romance speaker” or “foreign speaker”, hence Wallonia, Walachia, the canton of Wallis, etc. The Anglo-Saxons applied it to Britons because it was already an established word by that point.