This topic is taken from a small off shot from an unrelated thread, but I was asked to post it up for further discussion here. Its a very specific theme, but its open to anyone.

Quote calgacus:
"Roman writers referred to the Scotii as attackers of Hadrian's Wall.
Later it comes to mean "Gael". Scotland was called Scotland and Scotia because the it was the "Land of the Gaels".

I've read this too, that the origins of the name Scot comes from Romans on Hadrian’s wall calling the Irish raiders Scotti, but all the references I've read ASSUME it means raiders and don't really know the meaning of it.

I've looked it up further (on the internet) and Ancient Irish annals talk about the scots being a tribe, the Milesians, that originated in 'Synthia', of all places, who make thier way to northern spain and eventually to Ireland.
Theres talk that Scotia was derived from Scota, queen-mother of the Milesians.

Its hard to know what is myth and what is not with early Irish history, and I understand that these annels were writen down latter by Christian monks in Ireland, who would have added and subtracted peices of the oral history and tried to trace the Scots-Gaels origins back to the middle east, giving us a place in the geography thats most important in the bible, but Ireland is refered to as Scotland many times, and the Irish as Scots through out History by foriegners and the Irish.

Theres an Irish historian called Geoffrey Keating (1569-1644). He puts the name 'Scotia' as number 9 out of 14 names that Ireland has known. Eire was 4th, Hibernia was 10th and Irlanda was 13th, but this man is even more confussing than the rest of them.

I know latin was well respected (I know thats an understatement), but did all this just come from a few soldiers on Hadrians wall calling a bunch of mad Irish men 'raiders' in latin?

Well, the word "Scotii" is Latin and it is centuries before the word and its derivatives are used in non-classical sources.

My conjecture, and it is only conjecture, is that the Gaels started showing up in western Scotland in the 4th century and joining Pictish raids and that the Roman interpreters found that a group of the raiders were speaking a new language. Later, the Romans probably realized that this new language was common in Ireland. But it should not be forgotten that the "Scots" are first encountered as land invaders attacking northern Britannia in alliance with the Picts. ;)

The medieval accounts of Scota and all that are attempts by Irish learned men to fit their civilization into a Classical-Biblical system. The Goths do exactly the same thing. It's pure fantasy of course. What you've got to remember, is that these men didn't have any certainty about their own history, but were certain that Biblical history was true. God created man in the middle east not long before them. The Bible goes then gives an account of the ethnogenisis of one nation, the Israelites. These barbarian writers had to fit there own culture into this system. They had to give their own ethnogenesis, in a manner which cohered with the Biblical then classical histories.

In the Scottichronicon. the Scots get traced to Egypt via almost everywhere. But Egypt is the same place that the Israelites emerged from. That says it all really ;)

I know all that, and the Egyptian stuff is mental. I suppose to answer my question then; yes, the Irish scholars embraced the name Scotland for Ireland and themselves as scottish, as did continental scholars, for centuries because Latin and everything Roman held a lot of wieght, even to the point of being ridiculous.

those poor picts