Scotland: land of the hard footed Irish

Let me take you on a journey to the land of the Irish, more commonly known as Scotland. In the 6th century C.E. after the Romans withdrew from Britain an Irish tribe invaded present day Scotland ultimately leading to all the inhabitants of the region to be named Scots. There is no known origin for the word Scot but it is first attested in Latin as Scotti in circa 400 and was possible adopted back into Gaelic via this route. The other Roman name for the area was Caledonia, which is too of uncertain origin. The Scot Gaelic word for the region is Alba, which again is also of uncertain origin.

Now that we have discussed the uncertainties surrounding the origins, let’s have a butcher’s at some of the etymologies which are certain not. One theory purports Scot to come from Scuit, meaning of ‘a man cut off’ and denoting a renegade band of Irishman that settled in the area. Another theory states that Scoti was derived from a Gaelic ethnonym Sgaothaich from sgaoth “swarm”, plus the derivational suffix -ach (plural -aich). So a roving and swarming band or a man cut off therefrom seem to be the options.

Moving on to Caledonia, this is named for the Caledonii tribe. Here the theorizing leads us to the options of “possessing hard feet” via Proto-Celtic roots or just ‘hard’ via Welsh which could refer to either the people or the land they inhabited. 

Alba ultimately derives from the Indo-European root for “white” and first appears as Albion and is both used to refer to Britain as a whole as well as to the northern part where the swarming Irish tribe settled. For Britain as a whole the thinking is that it refers the white chalk cliffs while for the northern part the thinking is that is share a root with the Alps and refers to the mountains. It came to be used by Gaelic speakers in the form of Alba. In the High Medieval period this name changed to Albania (it is apparently unclear if this shares the same etymon as modern Albania) which is the source of the present day Albany as in the Duchy of Albany and by extension also Albany, New York, US and Albany, Western Australia, AU. 

Mashing and mixing all theories together in an etymological chimera, one could say, and I shall, that Scotland is the land of a hard footed swarming Irish band cut off from the main tribe that invaded the hard white land the Romans absquatulated.