G'say all,

A lot of discussion of Scotland back a ways, talking about later uses of words like scot. Of course the country/region names go back to the Roman occupation of the more southerly parts of Britain.

To that pack of opportunists from the Mediterranean regions, the north was untenable: Ireland was Hibernia (essentially, the Land of Winter) and Scotland was Scotia ... which is why we still have Nova Scotia ... Scotia is Greek (spoken widely by educated Romans of those days) for darkness, thus 'Land of Darkness'. In this case, the name passed o the the residents, as the 'Scotii' ... because the Romans needed to have a name ... the locals did not!

I don't believe that any country - or people - is named by its own people. To them, they are simply "Us" ... and where they live is "Here". It's only when someone comes from somewhere else that there is need to make distinctions. We blithely name a "newly discovered" region in our terms, not the residents'.

Regards,

Bob Bolton