I came across this claim in an old book I was reading (“Lovely is the Lee”-by Robert Gibbings, 1945). In chapter 15, he quotes James Joyce: “the name Scotia originally belonged to Ireland; Scotland was then called Alba, subsequently became known as “Scotia Minor”…by the 11th century, Ireland retrned to the name Eire, and Scotia was then exclusively applied to Ireland”.
I can find no validation for this claim-is it true?
Scotia - Wikipedia “Scotia was originally a Roman name for Ireland, inhabited by the people they called Scoti or Scotii. Use of the name shifted in the Middle Ages to designate the part of the island of Great Britain lying north of the Firth of Forth, the Kingdom of Alba. By the later Middle Ages it had become the fixed Latin term for what in English is called Scotland.”
I believe the Scots were a tribe who had migrated into Scotland from Ireland, joining the Picts who were already there. In Roman times, Scotland was inhabited by both Picts and Scots.
According to Wikipedia
Alba gu brath
Scoti, the Latin form of what is evidently an Irish tribal name, is first applied to people from Ireland. Neither Scotia nor Scotland was ever a name for Ireland as a whole. The various kingdoms of the Gaelic-speaking peoples of Scotland and Ireland aren’t really culturally distinct in the early Middle Ages, so there’s no reason for an outsider to distinguish between the two landmasses.
The Scotti that settled the west coast of Scotland were a tribe/nation called “Dal Riata”, that was gradually forced out of Ulster by another tribe, the Ui Niell (who are still around, incidentally - they became the huge O’ Neill clan). The Dal Riata went to the island that they called Earr a’ Ghaediall* - “The Border of the Gaels”. That gradually evolved into Argyll, which is still the title of the man who claims the most direct descent from the kings of the Dal Riata.
The Dal Riata fought with, and married into, the Pictish tribes living in the Highlands, until Kenneth macAlpin, the son of a Gaelic father and Pictish mother, could claim to be king of both peoples.
Gradually, the name Scotia, and then Scotland, spread to the lands occupied by the other two ethnic groups living there, the Anglic-speaking Northumbrians in the southeast, and the Brythonic (akin to Welsh) Britons living in Strathclyde.
*Not sure of spelling.
So … the Canadian province of Nova Scotia is basically “New Scotland” (or maybe “New Ireland”)?
My favourite history textbook explains the matter thus:
The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).