Walloons (Fr. Wallon), the name given to a population of mixed Celtic and Romanic stock akin to the French, occupying the tract along the frontiers of the Teutonic-speaking territory in the South Netherlands, from Dunkirk to Malmey. They are located more particularly in the Ardennes, in parts of Pas-de-Calais, Nord, Aisne, and Ardennes in France, but chiefly in South Brabant, Hainault, Namur, Liège, and Luxemburg, and in the neighbourhood of Malmey in Rheinish Prussia. The Walloons, whose numbers in Belgium are stated at 24 millions, are the descendants of the old Gallic Belgæ, who held their ground among the Ardennes Mountains when the rest of Gaul was overrun by the German conquerors, but became eventually Romanised, especially in their language, which is now a patois or popular dialect of northern French, with a considerable infusion both of old Celtic and Low German elements. The name Walloon (in Dutch Walen) is akin to Galli, Gaels, Welsh,
Welsch, Wallachians, &c. The Walloons of the present day resemble their French more than they do their Flemish neighbours. They are middle-sized, with dark hair, and are adroit, active, impulsive, and in every way more like the French than the Flemings. They make good soldiers, and were famous as ruthless mercenaries in the Thirty Years' War (Tilly was a Walloon); and it is worthy of notice that the Belgian revolution was pre-eminently the work of the Walloon districts. It was against the Walloon spirit and tendencies that the Flemish movement (see HOLLAND) was chiefly directed. During the persecutions by the Inquisition in the Low Countries bodies of Walloons fled to England, and many of the French-speaking Protestant congregations (often called 'Walloon congregations') were wholly or partly composed of Walloons (as at Canterbury, Norwich, and elsewhere).
See works on the people and dialect by Grandgagnage and Scheler (1845-80), Dejaradin (1863), Forix (1866-74), Simonon (1845), and Van der Kindere (1872).