Schott
Schott
From Old English Scottas (“people from Ireland, Irishmen”), from Late Latin Scotti (see Scōtī for more).
See Scoti.
The etymology of Late Latin Scoti is unclear. It is not a Latin derivation, nor does it correspond to any known Goidelic (Gaelic) term the Gaels used to name themselves as a whole or a constituent population group. Several derivations have been conjectured, but none has gained general acceptance in mainstream scholarship.
In the 19th century, Aonghas MacCoinnich proposed that Scoti came from Gaelic sgaothaich, meaning "crowd" or "horde".[12]
Charles Oman (1910) derived it from Gaelic scuit, meaning someone cut off. He believed it referred to bands of outcast Gaelic raiders, suggesting that the Scots were to the Gaels what the Vikings were to the Norse.[13]
More recently, Philip Freeman (2001) has speculated on the likelihood of a group of raiders adopting a name from an Indo-European root, *skot, citing the parallel in the Ancient Greek skotos (σκότος), meaning "darkness, gloom".[14]
Linguist Kim McCone (2013) derives it from the Old Irish noun scoth meaning "pick", as in "the pick" of the population, the nobility, from an Archaic Irish reconstruction *skotī.[15]
An origin has also been suggested in a word related to the English scot ("tax") and Old Norse skot; this referred to an activity in ceremonies whereby ownership of land was transferred by placing a parcel of earth in the lap of a new owner,[16] whence 11th-century King Olaf, one of Sweden's first known rulers, may have been known as a scot king.[17]