Is Wallace in the Bible? No, It Is a Scottish Name Meaning “Foreigner”

No one named Wallace appears in the Bible. Wallace is a Scottish surname from the Anglo-Norman French waleis, meaning “foreigner, Celt, Welshman.” It became a first name in honour of William Wallace, who led the Scottish fight against English rule in the 13th century. It has no Hebrew meaning.

What does Wallace mean?

Wallace began as a surname in Scotland and England. Its source, waleis, was the word for a Welshman in Anglo-Norman, the French spoken in England after the Norman Conquest, and more broadly it meant a foreigner or a Celt. The word is Germanic in origin and related to the Old English wælisc, “foreign, British, Welsh,” from which the English word Welsh comes. In Scotland the surname probably first marked someone from the old kingdom of Strathclyde, whose people spoke Cumbric, a language close to Welsh, or a newcomer from Wales.

As a first name, Wallace was taken up in honour of William Wallace. In the United States it was a common boys’ name in the early 20th century and reached 69th place in 1923. It dropped out of the top 1,000 after 1993, has appeared near the bottom of the list in most years since 2018, and ranked 960th in 2025. Wally and Wallie are its short forms.

Is Wallace a Hebrew or Jewish name?

No. Wallace has no Hebrew form and no meaning in Hebrew, and it is not in the Bible in any spelling. It arose in medieval Britain from a French word, more than a thousand years after the New Testament was written, and as a surname it came from Scottish and English families, not from Jewish tradition.

What does Wallace mean in the Bible?

Wallace has no meaning in the Bible, because the name is not there. Its meaning, “foreigner,” is a word the Bible uses often, as in the law of Moses about the stranger living in Israel: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). Ruth, a woman from Moab, asks Boaz, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” (Ruth 2:10). She became the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:17). The New Testament applies the same idea to Christians, whom Peter addresses “as sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11).

Lew Wallace and Ben-Hur

Lew Wallace (1827–1905), an Indiana lawyer and Union general in the American Civil War, wrote Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, published in 1880. He finished it while he was governor of New Mexico Territory. The novel is told from the point of view of a Jewish nobleman, Judah Ben-Hur, and by 1900 it had become the best-selling American novel of the 19th century. Wallace wrote in his autobiography that he had never been a member of any organized religion, but that he believed “in the Christian conception of God.”

Related reading

• 18 Bible Verses About Immigration, and the Reason the Law Gives Every Time
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names