It’s official – Wales* is in England

Nation Cymru staff

Despite years of fighting Wales’ corner when meeting people abroad, a little-known fact might mean that those claiming that Wales is a part of England might actually be correct after all.

Wales, of course, is a nation with its own language, culture and people, but it also happens to be a village and a civil parish in Rotherham, South Yorkshire

Historically, *Wales was part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and has a population of just over 7,000 people.

Historians are divided, but it is likely that Wales, the country, and Wales, the English parish have a shared etymology and origin story that speaks to England’s Celtic past.

Like the nation, the village name derives from the Germanic word ‘Walhaz’, a term used by Germanic people across Europe to refer to ‘foreigners’ or the Romanised inhabitants of the former Empire.

Many believe that this gives rise to the belief that the name records the continuation of a “British” population in this area, which survived the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, and remained distinctively Romano-British in language and culture.

Another explanation suggests that the settlement’s name may be derived from the word Waelas, meaning “field of battle” – which, either way, would have likely been a battle between the ancient Britons and Anglo-Saxons.

Cumbric

Further support for the idea that Wales is, indeed, a hint to a Pre-Saxon Brittonic culture comes in the form of the Cumbric language, an extinct Celtic Brythonic language or dialect that was spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or “Old North”, in what is now Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands.

Place-name evidence suggests Cumbric may also have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales, but Brittonic/an early form of Welsh was spoken throughout what is now known as England. The prevailing view is that Cumbric became extinct in the 12th century, around the incorporation of the Kingdom of Strathclyde into the Kingdom of Scotland.

Linguists are undecided as to whether to classify Cumbric as a dialect of Old Welsh or as a separate language. Koch calls it a dialect but goes on to say that some of the place names in the Cumbric region “clearly reflect a developed medieval language, much like Welsh, Cornish or Breton”.

“You’ve got the wrong Wales”

One resident, Dan Schofield, who lives in the village of Wales, told the BBC back in 2018: “It was a couple of years ago, for the Euros, there was a coach of Belgium fans that came and the driver had just put Wales in the sat-nav and they ended up here when they meant to be in Welsh Wales.

“[My brother] Joe was having a party and one of them knocked on the door and asked for directions, so we said: ‘We think you’ve got the wrong Wales.'”

The Rev Gary Schofield, the Vicar of Wales, said at the time: “Wales means the land of the stranger, the land of the foreigner. In Saxon times I think the Celts retreated to the high ground and came here to defend themselves, so that’s where we’ve got our name from.”

Back in 2023, an online newspaper claimed that ‘Yorkshire is actually Wales’ in an article that even had their readers up in arms.

The story posted by Yorkshire live attempted to explain the links between a Rotherham village in south Yorkshire called Wales – and the actual country of Wales.

The writers of the piece referred to Wales as a “dragon loving British principality nation-state” and said the entire county of Yorkshire “owes a lot to the often-overlooked leek waving neighbours west of the border”.

Yorkshiremen arrived in the comment section to blast the piece with one even saying “I can’t be Welsh, I’m not that keen on sheep’ and another calling the story “a load of nonsense and a way to fill some space on a so-called live news website”.

The article said: “Wales in Rotherham shares its name with the country because it comes from the same word, an Anglo-Saxon root meaning ‘Romanised foreigners’, which is a term used to refer to people in the western regions of the Roman Empire.

“What it means is that a Celtic presence was still strong in Wales, Yorkshire, just as it was in Wales, the country, and the two ended up with the same name – or so the theory goes.

“It’s not the only Celtic footprint left on God’s Own Country. In fact, Welsh language can be traced throughout Yorkshire.”

Although the article did draw on a mish mash of historical fact regarding the history of Celtic and Roman inhabitants in Britain, information on the links between Wales and Yorkshire didn’t quite hit the mark with some of Yorkshire Live’s readership.

One disgruntled reader commented: “There’s some substance to this but nowhere near of enough of an explanation in the story.

“The Welsh language was at one point spoken throughout a lot of the British Isles, English is derived from Latin which the Romans brought across, and having had 800 years of language evolution will have been changed again when the Normans arrived, as well as other bits coming in from Scandinavia and the like.”

The article explained the Celtic links of river names in Yorkshire but after the initial shock headline, the writers never really explained their theory that “Wales is actually Yorkshire” and one commenter even asked “Who is bothered boyo?”.

Wales isn’t just in England, either, with there thought to be at least 13 places in the world sharing the name – the majority of which come from homesick Welsh immigrants.

In the USA alone, Wales can be found in Wisconsin, Utah, Tennessee, North Dakota, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Iowa and Alaska.

In South Africa, there is a Wales in Mpumalanga, and there’s even a Wales in Guyana.

A Welsh Government spokesperson told Nation Cymru: “We can confirm that Wales, South Yorkshire, is in England.

“We can also confirm that New South Wales is in Australia and that whales are generally found in the ocean.

“Our Wales, meanwhile, remains in Wales.”

A Senedd petition is currently underway calling for Wales (the nation) to be referred to by its Cymraeg name. Check it out and sign here.

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