WALLACE

(male) Transferred use of the surname, in origin an ethnic byname from Old French waleis ‘foreign’, used by the Normans to denote members of various Celtic races in areas where they were in the minority: Welshmen in the Welsh marches, Bretons in East Anglia, and surviving Britons in the Strathclyde region. The given name seems to have been first used in Scotland, being bestowed in honour of the Scottish patriot William Wallace (c.1270–1305).