Origin of the Name Wallace
The origin of the name
Wallace was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives.
Over the centuries Surnames developed a wide number of variants. Different spellings of the same name can be traced back to an original root. Additionally when a bearer of a name emigrated it was not uncommon that their original name would be incorrectly transcribed in the record books at their new location. Surnames were also often altered over the years based on how they sounded phonetically and depending on the prevailing political conditions it may have been advantageous to change a name from one language to another.
Variants of the name Wallace
include Wallis, Wallice, Walles and Wallas. The word Walenis was used to designate the Britons of Strathclyde. From this word the name Wallace was derived. These names were popular in Ayrshire and Renfrewshire in the thirteenth century and Richard Wallace was the first noted of the name. His grandson, Adam, had two sons, Adam and Malcolm. Malcolm was the father of Scotland's hero, Sir William Wallace, 1274-1305, who led the revolt against the English. His memorial was built in 1896 and stands in Stirling on the top of Abbey Craig. The modern day film 'Braveheart' tells the story of this great man.
In Ireland this name and its variants were introduced into Ulster Province by settlers who arrived from England and Scotland, especially during the seventeenth century. It was the 'Plantations of Ireland' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that marked the end of Gaelic supremacy in Ireland. While the influx of settlers in the wake of the earlier Anglo-Norman invasion of the twelfth century resulted in a full integration into Irish society of the new arrivals, the same never occurred with the Ulster Planters who maintained their own distinct identity.
Wallace is sometimes an occasional variant of Walsh.
The Wallace coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all Wallace descendants.