walnut [OE] For the Anglo-Saxons and other ancient peoples of northern Europe the walnut was the ‘foreign nut’. The nut they knew was the hazelnut, and walnuts would have been exotic imports from the Roman world of the south. The wal- part comes from Volcae, the Latin name for a particular Celtic tribe that the Germanic peoples came to use for all Celts (it is where Welsh [OE] and Wales come from) and eventually for anyone not of Germanic stock.