The modern names of Scottish islands stem from two main influences. There are many names that derive from the Scottish Gaelic language in the Hebrides and Firth of Clyde. In the Northern Isles most place names have a Norse origin. There are also some island place names that originate from three other influences, including a limited number that are essentially English language names, a few that are of Brittonic origin and some of an unknown origin that may represent a pre-Celtic language. These islands have all been occupied by the speakers of at least three and in many cases four or more languages since the Iron Age, and many of the names of these islands have more than one possible meaning as a result.
Scotland has over 790 offshore islands, most of which are to be found in four main groups: Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, sub-divided into the Inner Hebrides and Outer Hebrides. There are also clusters of islands in the Firth of Clyde, Firth of Forth, and Solway Firth, and numerous small islands within the many bodies of fresh water in Scotland including Loch Lomond and Loch Maree.
The earliest written references to Scottish islands were made by authors in Classical antiquity. Many of the names for larger islands show some continuity although few of the names they identified for the smaller ones are cognate with the modern ones. Later writers such as Adomnán and the authors of the Irish annals also contributed to our understanding of these early toponyms.
Main languages Early languages
As humans have lived on the islands of Scotland since at least Mesolithic times, it is clear that pre-modern languages must have been used, and by extension names for the islands, that have been lost to history. Proto-Celtic is the presumed ancestor language of all the known Celtic languages. Proponents of the controversial Vasconic substratum theory suggest that many western European languages contain remnants of an even older language family of "Vasconic languages", of which Basque is the only surviving member. This proposal was originally made by the German linguist Theo Vennemann, but has been rejected by other linguists.
A small number of island names may contain elements of such an early Celtic or pre-Celtic language, but no certain knowledge of any pre-Pictish language exists anywhere in Scotland.Clarkson (2008) pp. 30-34
Celtic languages British or Brythonic was an ancient P-Celtic language spoken in Britain. It is a form of Insular Celtic, which is descended from Proto-Celtic, the hypothetical parent language that many linguistics belief had already begun to diverge into separate dialects or languages in the first half of the first millennium BC. By the sixth century AD, scholars of early Insular history often begin to talk about four geographically separate forms of British: Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and the now extinct Cumbric language. These are collectively known as the Brythonic languages. It is clear that whenever place names are recorded at an early date as having been transposed from a form of P-Celtic into Gaelic that this occurred prior to the transformation from "Old British" into modern Welsh.Watson (1994) p. 71 There are numerous Scottish place names with Brythonic roots although the number of island names involved is relatively small.
The Pictish language offers considerable difficulties. It is a term used for the language(s) thought to have been spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It may have been a fifth branch of Brythonic; Kenneth H. Jackson thought that the evidence is weak, but Katherine Forsyth disagreed with his argument. The idea that a distinct Pictish language was perceived at some point is attested clearly in Bede's early 8th-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which names it as distinct from both Old Welsh and Old Gaelic.Bede (731) Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. However, there is virtually no direct attestation of Pictish short of the names of people found on monuments in the lands controlled by the Picts - the area north of the Forth-Clyde line in the Early Middle Ages.Clarkson (2008) p. 31 Many of these monuments include elaborate carved symbols, but an understanding of their significance has so far proved as elusive as interpretation of the few written fragments, which have been described as resembling an "odd sort of gibberish".Clarkson (2008) p. 10 Nonetheless, there is significant indirect place-name evidence for the Picts use of Brythonic or P-Celtic. The term "Pritennic" is sometimes used to refer to the proto-Pictish language spoken in this area during the Iron Age.
Given the paucity of knowledge about the Pictish language it may be assumed that islands names with P-Celtic affiliations in the southern Hebrides, and Firths of Clyde and Forth are Brythonic and those to the north and west are of Pictish origin.
Old Gaelic is a Goidelic language that arrived via Ireland due to the growing influence of the kingdom of Dalriada from the 6th century onwards.Armit, Ian "The Iron Age" in Omand (2006) p. 57 - but see Campbell critique It was formerly spoken over a far wider area than today. Scottish Gaelic, along with modern Manx and Irish, are descended from Middle Irish, a derivative of Old Gaelic, which is descended in turn from Primitive Irish. This the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages, which is known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the Ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Britain up to about the 6th century. Its modern form is still spoken in parts of the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides, and in Scottish cities by some communities. The Beurla-reagaird is a Gaelic-based cant of the Scottish travelling community.Neat, Timothy (2002) The Summer Walkers. Edinburgh. Birlinn. pp. 225-29
Norse and Norn Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300. Its influence on Scots island names is considerable due to the development of both the Earldom of Orkney and the Kingdom of the Isles which resulted in almost all of the inhabitable islands of Scotland (except those in the Firth of Forth) coming under Norse control from the 9th to 13th centuries.
Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that developed from Old Norse and was spoken in Shetland, Orkney and possibly Caithness. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group. Very little written evidence of the language has survived and as a result it is not possible to distinguish any island names that may be Norn rather than Old Norse. After the Northern Isles were pledged to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, the early Scottish Earls spoke Gaelic when the majority of their subjects spoke Norn and both of these languages were then replaced by Insular Scots.Lamb, Gregor "The Orkney Tongue" in Omand (2003) pp. 248-49.
English and Scots English is a West Germanic language, the modern variant of which is generally dated from about 1550. The related Scots language, sometimes regarded as a variety of English, has regional and historic importance in Scotland. It is officially recognised as autochthonous language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages."European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages" Scottish Government. Retrieved 27 September 2007. It is a language variety historically spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster.
Although they are the dominant languages in modern Scotland the presence of both Scots and English in island names is limited.
Earliest names
The earliest written references to Scottish islands were made by classical authors in Latin and Ancient Greek. At a much later date the Ravenna Cosmography, which was compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna around AD 700, mentions various Scottish island names. This document frequently used maps as a source of information and it has been possible to speculate about their modern equivalents based on assumptions about voyages made by early travellers 300–400 years prior to its creation. The presence of the monastery on Iona led to life in this part of Scotland in the Early Middle Ages being relatively well recorded from the mid-6th to the mid-9th century. Norse settlers in Scotland had a significant influence on toponyms from the 9th century onwards although there is little contemporary documentation of this period of Scottish history by those who lived there. From 849 on, when Columba's relics were removed in the face of Viking incursions, written evidence from local sources all but vanishes for three hundred years.Woolf (2006) p. 94 Some modern island names appear to have ancient pre-Celtic roots as identified below.
Pytheas of Massilia visited Britain – probably sometime between 322 and 285 BC – and described it as triangular in shape, with a northern tip called Orcas.Breeze, David J. "The ancient geography of Scotland" in Smith and Banks (2002) pp. 11–13. This may have referred to Dunnet Head on mainland Scotland, from which Orkney is visible."Early Historical References to Orkney" Orkneyjar.com. Retrieved 27 June 2009. Writing in the 1st century AD, the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela called the islands of Orkney , as did Tacitus in 98 AD, claiming that his father-in-law Agricola had "discovered and subjugated the Orcades hitherto unknown" (although both Mela and Pliny the Elder had previously referred to the islands).
In AD 43 and circa AD 77 respectively Pomponius Mela and Pliny (in his Natural History) also referred to seven islands they respectively called and , both of which are assumed to be Shetland. The earliest written references that have survived relating to the Hebrides also appear in the Natural History, where Pliny states that there are 30 , and makes a separate reference to , which Watson concludes is unequivocally the Outer Hebrides. Writing about 80 years later, in 140-150 AD, Ptolemy, drawing on the earlier naval expeditions of Agricola, wrote that there were only five (possibly meaning the Inner Hebrides) and Dumna.Watson (1994) pp. 40–41Watson (1994) p. 38 Later texts in Latin, by writers such as Solinus, use the forms and .Louis Deroy & Marianne Mulon (1992) , Paris: Le Robert, article "Hébrides".
For the individual Hebridean islands, Islay is Ptolemy's , Malaios is Mull and his Scetis is presumed to be Skye (although it is not listed as one of the Ebudes).Watson (1994) p. 37Thayer, Bill Ptolemy: the Geography. University of Chicago. Retrieved 1 May 2020.
Adomnán, the 7th century abbot of Iona, recorded the names of various islands in the Hebrides. Unlike the unnamed monk of Ravenna and his classical forebears, Adomnán was clearly writing about places with which he was familiar.Youngson (2001) pp. 65-67 It is therefore possible that some of these records indicate for the first time names used by the islands' inhabitants.There are also various early references from texts written in Ireland and Scotland - 'Celtic' in the list below.
The following table lists island names that are either recorded prior to AD 1200 or, in the case of the Norse names for the Suðreyjar, were probably recorded at a slightly later date but are likely to have been in use by then. The rulers of the Kingdom of the Isles, which comprised the Hebrides, the islands of the Firth of Clyde and the Isle of Man were of Norse origin from the mid-9th century.