wealhhnutu

Old English wealhhnutu combines wealh ('foreigner, Celt, Roman') and hnutu ('nut'). The wealh component is the same word that gives us 'Wales' and 'Welsh' — it was the Germanic term for non-Germanic peoples, particularly Romanized Celts. The walnut was the 'foreign nut,' the 'Welsh nut,' the nut that came from the Roman world rather than from local Germanic forests.

The walnut originated in Central Asia — modern Iran, Kyrgyzstan, and western China. It spread westward along trade routes. The Romans cultivated it extensively and called it Jovis glans, 'Jupiter's nut,' or nux gallica, 'the Gallic nut.' Each culture named it by where they thought it came from. The Persians said it was Greek. The Romans said it was Gallic. The English said it was foreign.

Walnut wood became one of the most prized hardwoods in European furniture-making. Its dark color, fine grain, and workability made it the standard for gunstocks from the 1400s onward. A walnut-stocked musket was the mark of quality. By the 1700s, demand for walnut wood had depleted European forests, and black walnut (Juglans nigra) from North America began to fill the gap.

English walnut (Juglans regia, 'the royal nut of Jupiter') is today grown commercially across California, China, Iran, and Turkey. California produces about 99% of American walnuts and about a third of the global supply. The foreign nut became one of the most domesticated. The tree that every culture named as someone else's import turned out to belong to nobody and everywhere.