WALLIA, the present Latin name of the country now called Wales.  This is the name given it by most of the Saxon writers who had occasion to mention this country.  Giraldus Cambrensis falls foul of Galfrid, in his translation of the British history, for his foolish etymology of Wales from Wallon, a general, or Wendolen, a queen; and calls it false and fabulous, as there never were such persons in Wales; nor is that passage to be found in the British original, which, no doubt, Giraldus knew when he called it a fable of Galfrid, which he had added as a flourish in his translation of the old British history.  Giraldus insists that Wallia is a Saxon word signifying foreign, and therefore the Cambrians are called Wallenses, and the country Wallia.  Polydore Virgil ignorantly claims this etymology as his own, or had not read Giraldus.  I own that the Saxons called the Cambrians Weales, and even the North Britains Stradcluyd Weales, and the Cornish Cornweales; but how came Taliessin, who lived within a hundred years after the Saxons coming to Britain, and before they had any learning among them, to call this country Wallia?

En tir a gollant
Ond Gwyllt Wallia.

There was no such a letter in the Latin as W, therefore there could not be such a word as Wallia in Taliessin's time; for the Roman language and learning flourished then among the Britons, as is well known to persons the least versed in the ecclesiastical history of those times.  And this word in Taliessin's poem must be wrote either Valia or Galia; the latter rather, which, by the British grammar rules and nature of the language, would be here wrote Gwyllt Alia, which afterwards, in imitation of the English, was wrote Wallia, or rather Walia.  Gàlia was certainly, in the ancient British, the name of Gaul, and the people Galiaid.  The Irish at this day call an inhabitant of France Gallta.  Why might not the inhabitants of Wales (upon a supposition that they came originally from Gaul) be called Walians by the Saxons, and the country Walia, as the idiom of the English is to turn Welsh words beginning with G into a W? as Gwal, Wall; Gwin, Wine; Gwlan, Wool; Gwynt, Wind; Gwan, Want, i.e., pale; Gair, Word; Gwae, Woe; Gwerth, Worth; Gwynn, White; Gwaeth, Worse; Gwaith, Work; etc., etc.  Cornugallia, the name of Cornwall, seems to be of the same origin, and Cornweales was the Saxon name.  John Major (Hist. Scot.) calls it Vallia. (Archaeologia Cambrensis, v.8, 4th series, 1877).