Saturday, August 7, 2010
As the Roman Empire gradually conquered the known world, they produced a new Celtic culture that spoke both a Celtic language and a Latin language. The Germanic tribes that resisted the Roman advance remained mostly north of the Danube. [They were ultimately able to get their revenge sacking the city of Rome some 500 years later.] Those tribes remaining true to their German roots had a word for those Celtic folks to the south. These folks had betrayed their German roots and had become "Romanized". These Celts had taken on Latin, and of course, this was not acceptable to the true Germanic tribes. The Germans used the term "walas" to denote those "foreigners" who spoke Celtic languages but were also Latin-speaking. It was this term that was later applied to Celts in general. Little did these Germans know that years later, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, would apply this term to describe the Britons who occupied the island yet to come, and the country yet to be, Wales. It is Wales that is home to our surname JONES.