Many of Scotland’s highest lands are located in the north and west of the country, in areas traditionally associated with Gaelic culture. It will therefore come as no surprise that a great number of the Scots terms for geographical features associated with hills and mountains are derived from Gaelic, though other languages are also involved. The debt that Scots owes to Gaelic is considerable, as this chapter will demonstrate.
As you will gather, the topography of Scotland is made up of a tapestry of different languages, and although parts of the picture are still visible (as in transparent names such as Hillfoot or Knock), there are many areas where time and cultural interaction have blurred the images. Investigating the early spellings of a name to determine its origin and meaning can be very interesting, but does not always produce conclusive results.