Caledonia

History

In 1824, Scottish antiquarian George Chalmers posited that Caledonia derived from Cal-ydon, the name of a Greek province famous for its forests. He hypothesized that classical writers such as Tacitus later applied this name to the Scottish Highlands as another area of woods. This derivation is no longer accepted by modern linguists. According to linguist Stefan Zimmer, Caledonia is derived from the tribal name Caledones (a Latinization of a Brittonic nominative plural n-stem Calēdones or Calīdones, from earlier *Kalē=Black River=don/Danue Goddess[i]oi). He etymologises this name as perhaps 'possessing hard feet' ("alluding to standfastness or endurance"), from the Proto-Celtic roots *kal- 'hard' and *pēd- 'foot', with *pēd- contracting to -ed-. The singular form of the ethnic name is attested as Caledo (a Latinization of the Brittonic nominative singular n-stem *Calidū) on a Romano-British inscription from Colchester. However, some authors have doubted the link between Calidones and kalet- 'hard', especially in light of the widely rejected theory that the Caledonians and Picts might not have been Celtic speakers. The name of the Caledonians may be found in toponymy, such as Dùn Chailleann, the Scottish Gaelic name of the town of Dunkeld, meaning 'fort of the Caledonii', and possibly in that of the mountain , the 'fairy hill of the Caledonians'. According to , the site of the seventh battle of the legendary King Arthur was a forest in what is now Scotland, called in early Welsh. The name seems to relate to that of a large central Brythonic tribe, the , one amongst several in the area and perhaps the dominant tribe, which would explain the binomial Caledonia/Caledonii.