Volcae

The Volcae (Latin: Volcae; Ancient Greek: Οὐόλκαι, Ouólkai) were a Celtic people, or group of peoples, attested from the 3rd century BC in widely separated parts of the Celtic world. Modern scholarship places the grouping's formation in central Europe, from where mobile bands bearing the name spread both eastward, into the middle Danube basin, Pannonia and ultimately Anatolia, and westward into southern Gaul. Two confederations, the Volcae Arecomici and the Volcae Tectosages, are recorded in Gaul, while a branch of the Tectosages became one of the three peoples of the Galatian confederation in Asia Minor. The tribal name was borrowed into Germanic as *walhaz, which later came to denote Celtic and then Romance speakers.