- some of the best known locations with place-names incorporating Gaelic dùn 'fort, castle' (or its P-Celtic sister-form din) have been inhabited for thousands of years. Before Old English-speaking invaders captured Edinburgh in the seventh century, the settlement that was to become Scotland's capital city was known as Dùn-Èideann, but the name was altered in the wake of this conquest to include Old English burh 'fortified enclosure'.
The term dun was borrowed by non-Gaelic speakers in the sense 'pre-historic fort', and is found in the Statistical Account of Scotland for Argyll (1791-99):
Duns are very numerous, not only in this, but in all parishes in the Highlands.