Walsh Family History

English and Irish: ethnic name from Middle English walshe (Old English wælisc) ‘foreign Welsh’. This form of the name was generally more common than Welsh especially in Ireland where it originally denoted a Welsh-speaking immigrant in particular any of the Welshmen who arrived in the wake of Strongbow's Anglo-Norman invasion of 1170.

In Ireland it is sometimes also a translation of Breathnach ‘Briton’. English: in Yorkshire and Lancashire the name is sometimes a shortened form of Walshaw.