Chapter 1 - (Clan) Gunn origin is northern mainland Scotland
1. A possible origin for the Gunns
The individual chapters can be downloaded as pdfs from latrobe.academia.edu/AlastairGunn
1.1 Before the Picts[1]
The renowned writer Neil M. Gunn considered he was a
‘remnant of an ancient race among mere upstart Gaels ... and parvenu Norsemen.’[2]
The most useful way to consider Gunn origin is that they were probably an indigenous, essentially non-related tribal group who from a very early time populated parts of what is now modern Caithness and Sutherland.
1.1 Before the Picts[1]
The renowned writer Neil M. Gunn considered he was a
‘remnant of an ancient race among mere upstart Gaels ... and parvenu Norsemen.’[2]
The most useful way to consider Gunn origin is that they were probably an indigenous, essentially non-related tribal group who from a very early time populated parts of what is now modern Caithness and Sutherland.
*ZPtolemy’s second century map with tribes as spelt by Blau in 1654[3] - Dunnet Head and Noss Head are added to enable geographical clarity. Note the Cornabij tribe next to Dunnet Head.
Ptolemy’s map of Scotland is awkward as Scotland is on a major angle but the real north of Scotland makes sense. Look at the map’s right side where Dunnet Head and Noss Head are marked. Ptolemy identified northern Scotland as having the tribes of Cornavii (in greater Caithness), Caerini, Carnonacae, and Creones / Cerones. The spelling of these groups is not fixed as his map was made in the second century,[4] no original copies survive and he wrote in Greek.
In William F. Skene’s 1836 work The Highlanders of Scotland[5] the Ptolemaic tribes are given with a K. Skene has the Kournaovioi occupying ‘Strathnaver and Kaithness’. So the occupants of Strathnaver and Caithness were Kourns; the second part of the Ptolemaic tribal name is concerned with Latin pluralisng. The other tribes along from Dunnet Head were Kreons, Karns, and Kairins (in Skene’s spelling).
One writer[6] notes of these tribes –
Cerones (or Creones), Carnonacae and Caereni? Ptolemy was probably doing the best he could but that seems to be far too coincidental. What three tribes would sit side by side and calmly tolerate nearly identical names? … Three … likely possibilities present themselves:
· The three have a common origin as a single tribe. They knew they had a common origin, and didn't mind the similarity in names because they knew they were all one tribe under different rulers.
· The area north from Argyll was occupied by one single tribe, not three. Due to variations in pronunciation by everyone involved, Ptolemy misunderstood his data and wrote down the three versions he received as three tribes, not one.
· The tribe(s) lived in a region which already had such a name, and adopted it in various pronunciations.
If one reads Ptolemy and places the tribes on a map you get a series of four, not three, tribes with similar sounding names (south to north up the western coast of Scotland): Cerones/Creones, Carnonacae, Caereni, Cornavii.
So the above is a strong suggestion that the four tribes identified by Ptolemy were really one group spread out over a significant area.
The 1901 Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland views the ‘Cerones, Creones and Carnonacae or Carini’ as one tribe[7] who lived from Cape Wrath to Ardnamurchan; it viewed the Cornovii as separate and that they lived along the north coast of Sutherland and Caithness (and possibly the Orkney Islands). If one accepts that text then the Cornavii / Kourns could be viewed as a separate tribal group. Certainly, Professors Rivet and Smith, and others, accept that ‘the Cornavii evidently occupied Caithness’.[8]
So what did Cornavii mean? It may have meant ‘people of the horn.’[9] But does horn refer to the shape of the land? Or does horn relate to a god? Or is horn a totemic ethonym based on an animal or bird? The current lack of archaeological support[10] for a religious / mythic base suggests a geographic / economic origin for Cornavii such as a horn shaped land.[11] But the meaning of Cournavii could also have a different origin – perhaps ‘people who, when considered from the sea, lived in a bleak spot with hills and poor beaches’ as we we do not know whether Cornavii was a name applied to the people living in an area or a name the Cornavii gave to themselves. There is a suggestion that a non-Indo European language existed in a very early period of North-East Scotland; no-one knows what ‘Kourn’ might have meant in that language. What matters is that the group of people existed and that the four Ptolemaic tribal names were all not far off the sound of the name Gunn, given dialects, complete language changes and centuries.
So the Kourns were a group of people living in Caithness / Sutherland / Strathnaver in the second century; it is obvious that some of their descendants would continue to live in that area (‘Gunns clung to their inaccessible acres among the hills’[12]) as we have no record of ethnic cleansing, super plagues or equivalent happening. Kourn appears as a generic, regional[13] word applied to the native people of Caithness / Sutherland / Strathnaver over many centuries, and which over time became a surname.
SUMMARY It is possible, but not definite, that a proto-Gunn name was in existence by the second century and that the name evolved over many centuries into the surname Gunn.
1.2 Gunns were Picts then Celts
Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes that were mentioned by Roman historians or on the world map of Ptolemy.[14]
Picts ‘a nation created by the union of a number of tribes’[15]
the Gunns…from the far north of Scotland, are descended from Pictish tribes…[16]
the word Gunn might be a relic of a pre-Celtic tongue.[17]
Ian Grimble[18] writes -
A typically mysterious tribe of the far north is the one called Gunn. The Gunns inhabited the mountainous area which contains Morven[19] and the Scarabens[20] (being the mountainous inland area of modern Caithness). To the south the hills descend to a level plain along the Moray Firth, which provided the Norsemen with their accessible Sutherland. But north of the Helmsdale river the east coast consists of huge cliffs, as intimidating as the hill country behind them. The entire area is rich in pre-historic remains, proto-Pictish defensive structures and later Pictish sculpture.... it was exactly the sort of refuge that the old inhabitants were likely to have chosen when invaders arrived ... (the name) Gunn might be so old that it belongs to a pre-Celtic language like the name Strathnaver near by, which has been favoured with an unlikely Gaelic meaning. ... What seems most likely is that the Gunns were a Pictish tribe…[21]
To restate Grimble - the name ‘Gunn might be so old that it belongs to a pre-Celtic language’ which fits well with the central idea of the previous section. Strathnaver is mentioned as Naboros in Ptolemy’s map[22] so as the word Strathnaver evolved from Ptolemaic times it is plausible that the name Gunn may also have evolved from that time. Grimble[23] also points out that an alternative name for the Naver river was ‘Aodh’ meaning Mackay. This river title suggests that the Mackays were a Clan of power and, by implication, Gunns were merely non-linked, unimportant inhabitants of that area.
For Grimble the Gunns were Picts.[24] Pictish symbol stones have been found at Ackergill, Birkle Hill, Sandside, Crosskirk, Latheron, Ulbster, Skinnet, Latheron, Reay[25] and elsewhere; much of this is Gunn territory.[26] It is generally accepted that Picts came from the original inhabitants of northern Scotland[27] and were separate tribes which combined to tackle the Romans.[28] Picts also ‘generally did not favour the coastal zone and also avoided the floors of river valleys’[29] which matches the traditional Gunn mountainous inland areas. Being a minor Pictish non-kindred people also offer a strong reason why Gunns do not appear in historical records until late, and why there are no records of ancestral lands.
The Pictish influence died out in the later 800s as;
in 878 AD the Pictish king, Áed, was murdered and replaced by a Gael - Giric. Giric accelerated the Gaelic takeover of Pictish politics during his reign making the Gaelic language and traditions commonplace. Even after Giric was finally deposed in 889 AD future Pictish kings such as Donald and Constantine embraced Gaelic culture. By 900 AD Pictland ceased to exist. The reign of Donald is listed in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba as a king of Alba. Pictland and Dál Riata had gone and in their place Alba - a Gaelic word for Scotland - was created.[30]
Pict speaking Gunns over time and generations became Gaelic[31] speaking Celtic Gunns (and some may have been bilingual[32]), this is shown by place names in Gunn lands. Gaelic place names showing ownership or belonging include those with ‘achadh’ (meaning field / farm) or ‘baile’ (home / settlement) and are these are readily found in the traditional Gunn areas around Watten to Halkirk to Westerdale, and also towards the coast around Latheron and Dunbeath.[33] By contrast the Norse ‘Dale’ - meaning valley - in Gunn areas such as Helmsdale, Westerdale, Navidale, Ousdale, Berriedale etc indicates Norse geographic knowledge but not settlement in an area. Norse settlement is shown in coastal place names ending in ‘ster’ / ‘bster’ which indicates a farm or settlement, and ‘setter’ is Norse for homestead.[34] The key point is that much Gunn territory has place names showing that the Norse did not settle in Gunn areas; the Norse preferred coastal settlement.[35]
Gunn Gaelic speakers were not overrun or absorbed by Norse settlements otherwise the Gaelic place names would have disappeared.[36] Professor Nicolaisen says of the ninth to the thirteenth centuries period that the Norse / Celtic divide had ‘a quite clear marked separation of the two spheres of interest.’[37]
Summary. The lands Gunns inhabited were not part of the Norse sphere of influence although obviously some sort of interaction would have occurred; Gunns were most likely Picts then Celts.
1.3 Caithness place name origin; a discussion
Professor Nicolaisen’s[38] view[39] is that ancient ‘Caithness is primarily a tribal … name’[40] and ‘appears to have been given to the people in question by their Celtic-speaking neighbours … The Norsemen, as well as the Gaels, knew that the Pictish people, who lived in the area of roughly the same extent as modern Caithness and Sutherland were termed ‘the Cats’ and therefore, probably even before they (the Norsemen) ever set foot on the mainland, called the north-easternmost extremity quite appropriately Katanes ‘headland of the Cats’. (The term is) Initially perhaps only used of Duncansby Head … the name became more extensive in its application as the Scandinavian settlement area continued to grow ... The Norsemen applied the term Katanes ‘Caithness’… only to the area settled and governed by themselves…’[41]
To summarise Professor Nicolaisen’s key points –
· The use of the term Caithness by the Norse, was in essence restricted to areas specifically under Norse control. For the Norse the rest of the land was ‘Southland’[42] progressively settled by ‘Gaelic-speaking Scots from Ireland’[43] being the Kingdom of Dál Riada.
· Cait / Cat was not a term used by the tribes of Caithness / Sutherland; it was applied by Celtic speaking others to them.
So, if Cait was a name progressively applied to the tribal people of Norse controlled Caithness by Celtic-speaking outsiders then we have a possible Gunn equivalent; that the name which became Gunn (originally Kourn?) was applied to those living outside the Norse controlled Caithness by outsiders and/or by the Caits. I note that Pict is a term applied to the Picts by outsiders[44]; we do not know what the Picts called themselves.
It is not clear what Cait meant. One suggested meaning involves a minor, historically questionable Pictish Kingdom[45] but this is unlikely not least as Cait is a Gaelic term.[46] Another suggestion involves the importance of cats but that lacks archaeological and general historic support; in other words if cats[47] were that important there would be many carvings and such like evidence and there just isn’t this strong evidence.[48] In W.A. Cumin’s list of symbols on Pictish stones there is, in fact, no mention of any cats.[49] There is a third option. Picts were a warrior race - a stereotyped view is that ‘Picts have long been regarded as enigmatic savages who fought off Rome’s legions … wild tribesmen’[50] and we know Picts were warriors[51] from at least 297 C.E. The Rev. Mackay points out ‘that Old Gaelic cat, modern Gaelic cath … meant ‘war.’’[52] It is reasonable to assume that a name meaning ‘war’[53] - or something close to it - could be applied to the Celts of ‘Caithness’. So if the Gaelic origin of Cait was something like ‘war’ then this links strongly to the Gaelic meaning of the word Gunn which I discuss in the next section. It makes sense - a term applied to the warlike Caits[54] of one area could logically have a similar word apply to warlike neighbouring Gunns.
But one needs to be careful - from the time of Ptolemy’s map the names recorded for tribes / places / people may just be the closest approximation to the sound heard by non-speakers of Pictish / early Gaelic. In other words, we can invent a meaning from modern Gaelic for tribes / places / people when those terms may not have had that meaning in the original language.
SUMMARY. The Caits had their name given to them by outsiders. It is therefore possible that Gunns also had their name given to them by outsiders.
1.4 So how did these Picts / Celts become Gunns?
Most writers on the annals of the Scottish Highlanders do not reckon the (Gunns) as among the septs entitled to a full or separate notice at all. It strikes us, however, that they are among the very purest remnants of the Gael...[55]
Gunn … from the Gaelic Guinneach signifying sharp, fierce or keen...[56]
The Gaelic gunna seems but a variation of guineach, an arrow or dart, which is derived from guin, a sharp and sudden wound.[57]
The population of Gunn territory at the time the Norse were in Caithness were Picts or Gaelicised Picts. In Thomas Smibert’s view -
When the Norse Vikings first attacked Cat and succeeded in conquering the Picts there, they conquered by no means the whole province. They subdued and held only that part of Ness or modern Caithness, which lies next its north and east coasts, and the rest of the seaboard of Ness, Strathnavern and Sudrland, forcing their way up the lower parts of the valleys ... but they never conquered, so as to occupy and hold them, the upper parts of the river basins or the hills above them which remained in possession of Picts and Gaels throughout the whole period of Norse occupation[58]
So Norse control was mainly of bays and borders; a Pictish / Celtic group of non-kindred people who lived in inland, often peat-ridden inhospitable ancient Caithness – let us call them the ‘Gunns’ – would have been overall left alone by the Norse. And importantly there was no reason for the term Cait to be applied to these ‘Gunns’ by the powerful Norse as they were not in the Norse areas of occupation as already discussed. One version for the origin of Clan Sutherland has ‘that they are descended from the Celtic population who retreated before the Norsemen into the mountainous and inaccessible regions of their district’[59]; if it’s a possible origin for Clan Sutherland it is also a possible origin for the Gunns.
A logical theory for the origin of the name Gunn was also offered by Thomas Smibert[60] -
The (Gunn) name seems to be Gaelic or Celtic ... The word in the Erse tongue has certain meanings, rendering it not inappropriate as a name for a wild tribe of mountaineers in the old days. As a substantive, guin[61] signifies “fierceness,” and also “pain,” “a wound,” “a sting,” “a dart;” while, as a verb, it means “to wound, pierce or sting;” and, as an adjective, framed from the same root it has the sense of “sharp, keen, bitterly malicious.” So say Drs Norman Macleod and Daniel Dewar in their Gaelic dictionary. It therefore seems likely that guin was a generic term applied to some of the rudest and most northerly of the Scottish Highlanders in very early times ... In short, we repeat our belief that the name of Gunn had a generic origin, indicating a “fierce” tribe; and that they had been so christened by those around them ... Such native stories as that of ‘Gunn the Dane’’ cannot stand, in our eyes, against the more common-sense view ... [62]
The idea that the name Gunn was applied to the original inhabitants of the Gunn area in the Scottish Highlands seems reasonable not least as the main alternative fails; see chapter 2 for the insurmountable problems associated with the ‘Orkney / Norse / Viking’ Gunn origin myth.
Why were they called Gunn? Time has rolled on; we do not know what ‘Korn / Gunn’ meant in Ptolemaic or Pictish times but by the Norse time there is logic in the meaning of the Gaelic / Erse links to the word Gunn. One supects Gunns were not loved by those in Norse controlled areas on the coast who had more settled needs than an inland tribe – perhaps the Gunns raided the coastal villages or responded strongly when their lands were entered by outsiders. A generic ‘nasty’ name applied to the Gunns such as ‘fierce, sting’ by those in the more settled coastal towns would be quite logical. The word ‘Gunn’ could carry over from previous years but have gained a new meaning.
What adds to this idea of the surname being from Guin is an August 1638 signed document by Donald the Scholar (being MacHamish Generation 8 Number 11 – for a full discussion of the MacHamish family and generation / number see chapter 10) who signed the wadset of Kinbrace as Gune with the annotation ‘in my hand’. It is the earliest known use of the Gunn surname written by a member of the MacHamish family. A little later there is a 1652 document signed by Donald’s brothers Alexander Gunn of Killernan and of Navidale (being MacHamish generation 8 number 9) and co-signed by John Gunn of Borrobol (being MacHamish generation 8, number 10). Alexander signed as ‘Gun’ but his brother signed as ‘Gῡne’. So the earliest known signature is Gune, the next known are Gun and Gῡne. Gune / Gῡne is very close to Smibert’s Guin in sound and suggests support for the Guin origin of the Gunn surname. The National Records of Scotland (often abbreviated hereafter to NRS) record Guin, along with Gun as being the equivalent of Gunn in records from at least 1728 to 1800.[63] But, as mentioned in the previous section this may just be working backward from an ealier non-Celtic / old Gaelic word which sounded like Gunn / Kourns, to a modern Gaelic word which has no link to the original meaning. It is not possible to be definite as to the origin of the word Gunn, what is important is that the name Gunn was applied to the people of the region.
***
[1] ‘According to Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland, "the Picts did not 'arrive' - in a sense they had always been there, for they were the descendants of the first people to inhabit what eventually became Scotland" (page 775)’ http://www.ancient.eu/picts/ accessed 3 January 2017.
[2] Page 155, Neil M. Gunn, Selected Letters.
[3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Blaeu.1654.submap.Ptolemy.Damnij.jpg wikimedia commons accessed 9 January 2017.
[4] Dictionaries arrived later than the earliest of these maps so textual corruption has to be assumed as maps were manually copied.
[5] See https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aF6-BgAAQBAJ&pg=PT1&lpg=PT1&dq=The+Highlanders+of+Scotland+By+William+F.+Skene,+D.C.L.+(1836)&source=bl&ots=qfLZrbtz2W&sig=_zcMRmN22OO9wzQ6IfpUJySceB8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicwOW3s7XRAhXMIsAKHUaSCcUQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=ptolemy&f=false accessed 9 January 2017.
[6] http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/RomanCreones01.htm.
[7] http://digital.nls.uk/gazetteers-of-scotland-1803-1901/pageturner.cfm?id=97414066&mode=transcription accessed 2 January 2017.
[8] Page 141, A.L.F. Rivett, Colin Smith, The Place-names of Roman Britain.
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornovii accessed 9 January 2017.
[10] Section 1.3 discusses the origin of the word ‘Caithness’.
[11] Horn shaped land is also suggested for the origin of the word Cornwall. As well, the people who lived on the greater Wirral Peninsula were at one point Cornavii and that peninsula also has a horn shape.
[12] Page 43, Ian Grimble, Chief of Mackay.
[13] The regional basis for a Scottish surname is not a problem; Murray, for example, is a regional surname for those from Moray. There are many Scottish territorial, topographical and regional surnames. One view is that ‘Many of the first permanent (Scottish) surnames are territorial in origin’ see http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?r=551&560 accessed 8 February 2015. Ogilvie and Abercrombie are also surnames not based on descent from a Clan founder. Nor is Morrison, see page 6, A. W. Morrison, The Genealogy of the Morrison Origins in Scotland (2019).
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts accessed 17 March 2017. See also page 5 Lloyd and Jenny Laing The Picts and the Scots.
[15] Page 51, W. A. Cummins The Age of the Picts.
[16] Page 64, Gilbert Summers, Traditions of Scotland.
[17] Page 87, James Miller Portrait of Caithness and Sutherland.
[18] I thank Sir Charles Fraser for pointing out this comment from page 64, G. J. Summers Traditions of Scotland.
[19] Morven is the highest mountain in Caithness and lies north of Helmsdale, halfway between Kinbrace and Braemore.
[20] The Scarabens are a range of mountains about four kilometres in length, a little closer to Braemore than Morven and north of Helmsdale and Kildonan.
[21] Page 71, Ian Grimble, Clans and Chiefs.
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strathnaver accessed 5 March 2017.
[23] Pages 9-10, Ian Grimble, Chief of Mackay.
[24] ‘The common people of the (Gunn) clan were undoubtedly Pictish’ http://www.swanstrom.org/gunn.html accessed 9 January 2013.
[25] Drawn from page 123, Donald Omand, The Caithness Book.
[26] Page 87, John Haywood and Barry Cunliffe, The Historical Atlas of the Celtic World.
[27] See http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/picts/ accessed 8 March 2017. Or Wikipedia accessed 8 March 2017 said ‘Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes that were mentioned … on the world map of Ptolemy’.
[28] See http://www.clanntuirc.co.uk/JSNS/V9/Broderick%205.pdf accessed 7 August 2016; sections 3.7, 5.4 and 5.8.
[29] Page 155 W.F. H. Nicolaisen, Scottish Place Names.
[30] http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/articles/kingdom_of_the_picts/ accessed 17 December 2012.
[31] Mark Rugg Gunn writes, page 10, in his Clan Gunn that ‘The Scots spoke Gaelic, a tongue unintelligible to the Picts, and this language now spread along the paths of missionary endeavour, slowly displacing the Pictish dialects, so that by the time the Norsemen arrived in Scotland it had become the universal language of the people.’ This is questionable. To imply that it was all due to missionary endeavour is not supported by evidence. It is more useful to point out that the Scots of Dal Riata (western Scotland / Northern Ireland) probably absorbed the Pictish kingdom and Christianity was but a part of Dal Riata influence; the language of power and everyday life was Gaelic, not just the Church. The issue is when the Picts ‘lost’ their language and that’s just not clear.
[32] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 84 accessed 10 January 2013.
[33] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 78 including a list of some of the Gaelic origin named places accessed 10 January 2013.
[34] Page 127, Donald Omand, The Caithness Book.
[35] Norse ‘settlements gradually extended inland from the coastline, but not far, because of Celtic resistance’. Page 103, A.L. Lieforth, R.J. Munro The Scottish Invention of America, Democracy and Human Rights.
[36] In Caithness ‘there is not a single surviving or recorded place name of Norse origin, which incorporates an earlier Gaelic element, apart from perhaps Duncansby…’ http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 79 accessed 10 January 2013.
[37] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 77 accessed 10 January 2013.
[38] For a detailed life of Professor Nicolaisen see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._F._H._Nicolaisen.
[39] Prof. Bill Nicolaisen in ed. J. R. Baldwin, Caithness – A Cultural Crossroads Edinburgh 1982 Scottish Society for Northern Studies. See http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf for the original chapter.
[40] It is worth noting that at least one view of Clan Chattan gives descent from the Catti; if one Clan could descend from original inhabitants of an area so the Gunns could also descend from such original inhabitants. Pages 1- 5 Macpherson of Dalchully The Chiefs of Clan MacPherson.
[41] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 76 accessed 10 January 2013.
[42] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 77 accessed 11 January 2013.
[43] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 77 accessed 10 January 2013.
[44] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pict accessed 25 January 2014.
[45] Page 10, Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba 789-1070 details the questionable history.
[46] Pages 19-21, W.A. Cumins, The Age of the Picts suggests the underlying truth in the legend is best viewed as assorted (perhaps seven) Pictish tribes unifying together for some reason. There is an Irish version for the origin of the Picts which is ‘neither convincing nor very interesting’.
[47] And the Shetlands were Innsi Catt (Isles of Cats) before the Norse; one would again expect some sort of archaeological evidence in support and there isn’t. And one would also expect the Orkneys to have had the same totemic nature but its name origin is not ‘cat’ but more ‘wild boar’. W.P.L. Thomson notes the problem of the lack of animal themes on Pictish sculptures. See Page 4, W.P.L. Thomson, The New History of Orkney.
[48] Some minor support can be found on a few Pictish carvings; see Charles Thomas, Gathering the Fragments.
[49] Page 142, W.A. Cumins, The Age of Picts.
[50] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-about-the-picts-886098.html accessed 18 March 2017.
[51] http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/picts/accessed 17 March 2017.
[52] Page 93 Rev. Angus Mackay, Sutherland and Caithness in Ancient Geography see http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_042/42_079_094.pdf accessed 14 March 2017. He qualifies the statement … ‘If our northern name, however had been originally derived from Old Gaelic cat, war, the present form would be the softened Cathaich, but instead of that it is the hard form Cattaich, meaning ‘pertaining to cats’. Now word pronunciation changes over time; modern pronunciation does not automatically invalidate an earlier alternative.
[53] Or ‘battle’. Page 566 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=V89aAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA566&dq=old+gaelic+cat+battle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjlr8KO_d3SAhXLD8AKHQ2oAfwQ6AEISjAJ#v=onepage&q=old%20gaelic%20cat%20battle&f=false accessed 17 March 2017.
[54] Another suggestion, which seems ignored, is that Cait means ‘high or steep’ in Gaelic. Page 135, Sir David Dalrymple, Annals of Scotland from the Accession of Malcolm III Surnamed Canmore to the Accession of Robert 1.
[55] Page 170, ed. Thomas Smibert The Clans of the Highlands of Scotland; being an account of their Annals, Separately & Collectively with delineations of Their Tartans, and Family Arms. See Appendix 5 for the complete entry.
[56] Pages 384-385, William Anderson, The Scottish Nation Volume II, 1867. The Welsh ‘gwyn’ is also of interest; it comes from the proto-Brythonic and proto-Celtic (as in, was probably the same language origin as early northern Scotland) with meanings of ‘white’ and ‘blessed’ but later meaning including ‘ridges’ and ‘complaints.’ So, were original Gunns of fair skin, living on the ridges, who ‘complained’?
[57] Page 360, James Logan, The Scottish Gael; or, Celtic Manners, As Preserved among the Highlanders.
[58] http://www.scotsites.co.uk/ebooks/sagatimechapter3.htm accessed 18 December 2012.
[59] Page 293 Frank Adam (rev. Sir Thomas Innes of Learney) The Clans Septs and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands. P.93 J. Haywood, The Historical Atlas of the Celtic World, also makes this point about Scandinavian settlement being more ‘modern’ Caithness and coastal Sutherland, although coastal Sutherland was not intensively settled and was really Pictish land and people.
[60] See Appendix 5 of this work.
[61] ‘Campbells – In Gaelic they are called Clan Guin...’ Page V of the Appendix of Col. David Stewart, Sketches of the Highlanders of Scotland Volume 2. The idea is also picked up in Scottish Studies, Volumes 17-19, page 11. So Campbells could be seen as a tribal group whose name originally was that which became Gunn. Thomas Sinclair, The Gunns, page 10, quotes the Rev. William Findlater observation that the Campbells and Gunns look the same with ‘dark eyes and dark complexion’; certainly not Scandinavian.
[62] Pages 170-171, ed. Thomas Smibert, The Clans of the Highlands of Scotland. I note the word ‘tribe’…
[63] See, for example, National Records of Scotland (NRS) records CS271/9785, CS271/8973, CS271/ 7810 and CS271/9662 – that record is for 1748 and concerns Alexander Gunn of Badenloch, later of Wester Helmsdale, who was MacHamish generation 10 number 19 and concerns a Court of Sessions battle with the Factor to the Earl of Sutherland. Alexander’s legal battles are explored in his life in chapter 10.
Ptolemy’s map of Scotland is awkward as Scotland is on a major angle but the real north of Scotland makes sense. Look at the map’s right side where Dunnet Head and Noss Head are marked. Ptolemy identified northern Scotland as having the tribes of Cornavii (in greater Caithness), Caerini, Carnonacae, and Creones / Cerones. The spelling of these groups is not fixed as his map was made in the second century,[4] no original copies survive and he wrote in Greek.
In William F. Skene’s 1836 work The Highlanders of Scotland[5] the Ptolemaic tribes are given with a K. Skene has the Kournaovioi occupying ‘Strathnaver and Kaithness’. So the occupants of Strathnaver and Caithness were Kourns; the second part of the Ptolemaic tribal name is concerned with Latin pluralisng. The other tribes along from Dunnet Head were Kreons, Karns, and Kairins (in Skene’s spelling).
One writer[6] notes of these tribes –
Cerones (or Creones), Carnonacae and Caereni? Ptolemy was probably doing the best he could but that seems to be far too coincidental. What three tribes would sit side by side and calmly tolerate nearly identical names? … Three … likely possibilities present themselves:
· The three have a common origin as a single tribe. They knew they had a common origin, and didn't mind the similarity in names because they knew they were all one tribe under different rulers.
· The area north from Argyll was occupied by one single tribe, not three. Due to variations in pronunciation by everyone involved, Ptolemy misunderstood his data and wrote down the three versions he received as three tribes, not one.
· The tribe(s) lived in a region which already had such a name, and adopted it in various pronunciations.
If one reads Ptolemy and places the tribes on a map you get a series of four, not three, tribes with similar sounding names (south to north up the western coast of Scotland): Cerones/Creones, Carnonacae, Caereni, Cornavii.
So the above is a strong suggestion that the four tribes identified by Ptolemy were really one group spread out over a significant area.
The 1901 Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland views the ‘Cerones, Creones and Carnonacae or Carini’ as one tribe[7] who lived from Cape Wrath to Ardnamurchan; it viewed the Cornovii as separate and that they lived along the north coast of Sutherland and Caithness (and possibly the Orkney Islands). If one accepts that text then the Cornavii / Kourns could be viewed as a separate tribal group. Certainly, Professors Rivet and Smith, and others, accept that ‘the Cornavii evidently occupied Caithness’.[8]
So what did Cornavii mean? It may have meant ‘people of the horn.’[9] But does horn refer to the shape of the land? Or does horn relate to a god? Or is horn a totemic ethonym based on an animal or bird? The current lack of archaeological support[10] for a religious / mythic base suggests a geographic / economic origin for Cornavii such as a horn shaped land.[11] But the meaning of Cournavii could also have a different origin – perhaps ‘people who, when considered from the sea, lived in a bleak spot with hills and poor beaches’ as we we do not know whether Cornavii was a name applied to the people living in an area or a name the Cornavii gave to themselves. There is a suggestion that a non-Indo European language existed in a very early period of North-East Scotland; no-one knows what ‘Kourn’ might have meant in that language. What matters is that the group of people existed and that the four Ptolemaic tribal names were all not far off the sound of the name Gunn, given dialects, complete language changes and centuries.
So the Kourns were a group of people living in Caithness / Sutherland / Strathnaver in the second century; it is obvious that some of their descendants would continue to live in that area (‘Gunns clung to their inaccessible acres among the hills’[12]) as we have no record of ethnic cleansing, super plagues or equivalent happening. Kourn appears as a generic, regional[13] word applied to the native people of Caithness / Sutherland / Strathnaver over many centuries, and which over time became a surname.
SUMMARY It is possible, but not definite, that a proto-Gunn name was in existence by the second century and that the name evolved over many centuries into the surname Gunn.
1.2 Gunns were Picts then Celts
Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes that were mentioned by Roman historians or on the world map of Ptolemy.[14]
Picts ‘a nation created by the union of a number of tribes’[15]
the Gunns…from the far north of Scotland, are descended from Pictish tribes…[16]
the word Gunn might be a relic of a pre-Celtic tongue.[17]
Ian Grimble[18] writes -
A typically mysterious tribe of the far north is the one called Gunn. The Gunns inhabited the mountainous area which contains Morven[19] and the Scarabens[20] (being the mountainous inland area of modern Caithness). To the south the hills descend to a level plain along the Moray Firth, which provided the Norsemen with their accessible Sutherland. But north of the Helmsdale river the east coast consists of huge cliffs, as intimidating as the hill country behind them. The entire area is rich in pre-historic remains, proto-Pictish defensive structures and later Pictish sculpture.... it was exactly the sort of refuge that the old inhabitants were likely to have chosen when invaders arrived ... (the name) Gunn might be so old that it belongs to a pre-Celtic language like the name Strathnaver near by, which has been favoured with an unlikely Gaelic meaning. ... What seems most likely is that the Gunns were a Pictish tribe…[21]
To restate Grimble - the name ‘Gunn might be so old that it belongs to a pre-Celtic language’ which fits well with the central idea of the previous section. Strathnaver is mentioned as Naboros in Ptolemy’s map[22] so as the word Strathnaver evolved from Ptolemaic times it is plausible that the name Gunn may also have evolved from that time. Grimble[23] also points out that an alternative name for the Naver river was ‘Aodh’ meaning Mackay. This river title suggests that the Mackays were a Clan of power and, by implication, Gunns were merely non-linked, unimportant inhabitants of that area.
For Grimble the Gunns were Picts.[24] Pictish symbol stones have been found at Ackergill, Birkle Hill, Sandside, Crosskirk, Latheron, Ulbster, Skinnet, Latheron, Reay[25] and elsewhere; much of this is Gunn territory.[26] It is generally accepted that Picts came from the original inhabitants of northern Scotland[27] and were separate tribes which combined to tackle the Romans.[28] Picts also ‘generally did not favour the coastal zone and also avoided the floors of river valleys’[29] which matches the traditional Gunn mountainous inland areas. Being a minor Pictish non-kindred people also offer a strong reason why Gunns do not appear in historical records until late, and why there are no records of ancestral lands.
The Pictish influence died out in the later 800s as;
in 878 AD the Pictish king, Áed, was murdered and replaced by a Gael - Giric. Giric accelerated the Gaelic takeover of Pictish politics during his reign making the Gaelic language and traditions commonplace. Even after Giric was finally deposed in 889 AD future Pictish kings such as Donald and Constantine embraced Gaelic culture. By 900 AD Pictland ceased to exist. The reign of Donald is listed in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba as a king of Alba. Pictland and Dál Riata had gone and in their place Alba - a Gaelic word for Scotland - was created.[30]
Pict speaking Gunns over time and generations became Gaelic[31] speaking Celtic Gunns (and some may have been bilingual[32]), this is shown by place names in Gunn lands. Gaelic place names showing ownership or belonging include those with ‘achadh’ (meaning field / farm) or ‘baile’ (home / settlement) and are these are readily found in the traditional Gunn areas around Watten to Halkirk to Westerdale, and also towards the coast around Latheron and Dunbeath.[33] By contrast the Norse ‘Dale’ - meaning valley - in Gunn areas such as Helmsdale, Westerdale, Navidale, Ousdale, Berriedale etc indicates Norse geographic knowledge but not settlement in an area. Norse settlement is shown in coastal place names ending in ‘ster’ / ‘bster’ which indicates a farm or settlement, and ‘setter’ is Norse for homestead.[34] The key point is that much Gunn territory has place names showing that the Norse did not settle in Gunn areas; the Norse preferred coastal settlement.[35]
Gunn Gaelic speakers were not overrun or absorbed by Norse settlements otherwise the Gaelic place names would have disappeared.[36] Professor Nicolaisen says of the ninth to the thirteenth centuries period that the Norse / Celtic divide had ‘a quite clear marked separation of the two spheres of interest.’[37]
Summary. The lands Gunns inhabited were not part of the Norse sphere of influence although obviously some sort of interaction would have occurred; Gunns were most likely Picts then Celts.
1.3 Caithness place name origin; a discussion
Professor Nicolaisen’s[38] view[39] is that ancient ‘Caithness is primarily a tribal … name’[40] and ‘appears to have been given to the people in question by their Celtic-speaking neighbours … The Norsemen, as well as the Gaels, knew that the Pictish people, who lived in the area of roughly the same extent as modern Caithness and Sutherland were termed ‘the Cats’ and therefore, probably even before they (the Norsemen) ever set foot on the mainland, called the north-easternmost extremity quite appropriately Katanes ‘headland of the Cats’. (The term is) Initially perhaps only used of Duncansby Head … the name became more extensive in its application as the Scandinavian settlement area continued to grow ... The Norsemen applied the term Katanes ‘Caithness’… only to the area settled and governed by themselves…’[41]
To summarise Professor Nicolaisen’s key points –
· The use of the term Caithness by the Norse, was in essence restricted to areas specifically under Norse control. For the Norse the rest of the land was ‘Southland’[42] progressively settled by ‘Gaelic-speaking Scots from Ireland’[43] being the Kingdom of Dál Riada.
· Cait / Cat was not a term used by the tribes of Caithness / Sutherland; it was applied by Celtic speaking others to them.
So, if Cait was a name progressively applied to the tribal people of Norse controlled Caithness by Celtic-speaking outsiders then we have a possible Gunn equivalent; that the name which became Gunn (originally Kourn?) was applied to those living outside the Norse controlled Caithness by outsiders and/or by the Caits. I note that Pict is a term applied to the Picts by outsiders[44]; we do not know what the Picts called themselves.
It is not clear what Cait meant. One suggested meaning involves a minor, historically questionable Pictish Kingdom[45] but this is unlikely not least as Cait is a Gaelic term.[46] Another suggestion involves the importance of cats but that lacks archaeological and general historic support; in other words if cats[47] were that important there would be many carvings and such like evidence and there just isn’t this strong evidence.[48] In W.A. Cumin’s list of symbols on Pictish stones there is, in fact, no mention of any cats.[49] There is a third option. Picts were a warrior race - a stereotyped view is that ‘Picts have long been regarded as enigmatic savages who fought off Rome’s legions … wild tribesmen’[50] and we know Picts were warriors[51] from at least 297 C.E. The Rev. Mackay points out ‘that Old Gaelic cat, modern Gaelic cath … meant ‘war.’’[52] It is reasonable to assume that a name meaning ‘war’[53] - or something close to it - could be applied to the Celts of ‘Caithness’. So if the Gaelic origin of Cait was something like ‘war’ then this links strongly to the Gaelic meaning of the word Gunn which I discuss in the next section. It makes sense - a term applied to the warlike Caits[54] of one area could logically have a similar word apply to warlike neighbouring Gunns.
But one needs to be careful - from the time of Ptolemy’s map the names recorded for tribes / places / people may just be the closest approximation to the sound heard by non-speakers of Pictish / early Gaelic. In other words, we can invent a meaning from modern Gaelic for tribes / places / people when those terms may not have had that meaning in the original language.
SUMMARY. The Caits had their name given to them by outsiders. It is therefore possible that Gunns also had their name given to them by outsiders.
1.4 So how did these Picts / Celts become Gunns?
Most writers on the annals of the Scottish Highlanders do not reckon the (Gunns) as among the septs entitled to a full or separate notice at all. It strikes us, however, that they are among the very purest remnants of the Gael...[55]
Gunn … from the Gaelic Guinneach signifying sharp, fierce or keen...[56]
The Gaelic gunna seems but a variation of guineach, an arrow or dart, which is derived from guin, a sharp and sudden wound.[57]
The population of Gunn territory at the time the Norse were in Caithness were Picts or Gaelicised Picts. In Thomas Smibert’s view -
When the Norse Vikings first attacked Cat and succeeded in conquering the Picts there, they conquered by no means the whole province. They subdued and held only that part of Ness or modern Caithness, which lies next its north and east coasts, and the rest of the seaboard of Ness, Strathnavern and Sudrland, forcing their way up the lower parts of the valleys ... but they never conquered, so as to occupy and hold them, the upper parts of the river basins or the hills above them which remained in possession of Picts and Gaels throughout the whole period of Norse occupation[58]
So Norse control was mainly of bays and borders; a Pictish / Celtic group of non-kindred people who lived in inland, often peat-ridden inhospitable ancient Caithness – let us call them the ‘Gunns’ – would have been overall left alone by the Norse. And importantly there was no reason for the term Cait to be applied to these ‘Gunns’ by the powerful Norse as they were not in the Norse areas of occupation as already discussed. One version for the origin of Clan Sutherland has ‘that they are descended from the Celtic population who retreated before the Norsemen into the mountainous and inaccessible regions of their district’[59]; if it’s a possible origin for Clan Sutherland it is also a possible origin for the Gunns.
A logical theory for the origin of the name Gunn was also offered by Thomas Smibert[60] -
The (Gunn) name seems to be Gaelic or Celtic ... The word in the Erse tongue has certain meanings, rendering it not inappropriate as a name for a wild tribe of mountaineers in the old days. As a substantive, guin[61] signifies “fierceness,” and also “pain,” “a wound,” “a sting,” “a dart;” while, as a verb, it means “to wound, pierce or sting;” and, as an adjective, framed from the same root it has the sense of “sharp, keen, bitterly malicious.” So say Drs Norman Macleod and Daniel Dewar in their Gaelic dictionary. It therefore seems likely that guin was a generic term applied to some of the rudest and most northerly of the Scottish Highlanders in very early times ... In short, we repeat our belief that the name of Gunn had a generic origin, indicating a “fierce” tribe; and that they had been so christened by those around them ... Such native stories as that of ‘Gunn the Dane’’ cannot stand, in our eyes, against the more common-sense view ... [62]
The idea that the name Gunn was applied to the original inhabitants of the Gunn area in the Scottish Highlands seems reasonable not least as the main alternative fails; see chapter 2 for the insurmountable problems associated with the ‘Orkney / Norse / Viking’ Gunn origin myth.
Why were they called Gunn? Time has rolled on; we do not know what ‘Korn / Gunn’ meant in Ptolemaic or Pictish times but by the Norse time there is logic in the meaning of the Gaelic / Erse links to the word Gunn. One supects Gunns were not loved by those in Norse controlled areas on the coast who had more settled needs than an inland tribe – perhaps the Gunns raided the coastal villages or responded strongly when their lands were entered by outsiders. A generic ‘nasty’ name applied to the Gunns such as ‘fierce, sting’ by those in the more settled coastal towns would be quite logical. The word ‘Gunn’ could carry over from previous years but have gained a new meaning.
What adds to this idea of the surname being from Guin is an August 1638 signed document by Donald the Scholar (being MacHamish Generation 8 Number 11 – for a full discussion of the MacHamish family and generation / number see chapter 10) who signed the wadset of Kinbrace as Gune with the annotation ‘in my hand’. It is the earliest known use of the Gunn surname written by a member of the MacHamish family. A little later there is a 1652 document signed by Donald’s brothers Alexander Gunn of Killernan and of Navidale (being MacHamish generation 8 number 9) and co-signed by John Gunn of Borrobol (being MacHamish generation 8, number 10). Alexander signed as ‘Gun’ but his brother signed as ‘Gῡne’. So the earliest known signature is Gune, the next known are Gun and Gῡne. Gune / Gῡne is very close to Smibert’s Guin in sound and suggests support for the Guin origin of the Gunn surname. The National Records of Scotland (often abbreviated hereafter to NRS) record Guin, along with Gun as being the equivalent of Gunn in records from at least 1728 to 1800.[63] But, as mentioned in the previous section this may just be working backward from an ealier non-Celtic / old Gaelic word which sounded like Gunn / Kourns, to a modern Gaelic word which has no link to the original meaning. It is not possible to be definite as to the origin of the word Gunn, what is important is that the name Gunn was applied to the people of the region.
***
[1] ‘According to Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland, "the Picts did not 'arrive' - in a sense they had always been there, for they were the descendants of the first people to inhabit what eventually became Scotland" (page 775)’ http://www.ancient.eu/picts/ accessed 3 January 2017.
[2] Page 155, Neil M. Gunn, Selected Letters.
[3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Blaeu.1654.submap.Ptolemy.Damnij.jpg wikimedia commons accessed 9 January 2017.
[4] Dictionaries arrived later than the earliest of these maps so textual corruption has to be assumed as maps were manually copied.
[5] See https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aF6-BgAAQBAJ&pg=PT1&lpg=PT1&dq=The+Highlanders+of+Scotland+By+William+F.+Skene,+D.C.L.+(1836)&source=bl&ots=qfLZrbtz2W&sig=_zcMRmN22OO9wzQ6IfpUJySceB8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicwOW3s7XRAhXMIsAKHUaSCcUQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=ptolemy&f=false accessed 9 January 2017.
[6] http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/RomanCreones01.htm.
[7] http://digital.nls.uk/gazetteers-of-scotland-1803-1901/pageturner.cfm?id=97414066&mode=transcription accessed 2 January 2017.
[8] Page 141, A.L.F. Rivett, Colin Smith, The Place-names of Roman Britain.
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornovii accessed 9 January 2017.
[10] Section 1.3 discusses the origin of the word ‘Caithness’.
[11] Horn shaped land is also suggested for the origin of the word Cornwall. As well, the people who lived on the greater Wirral Peninsula were at one point Cornavii and that peninsula also has a horn shape.
[12] Page 43, Ian Grimble, Chief of Mackay.
[13] The regional basis for a Scottish surname is not a problem; Murray, for example, is a regional surname for those from Moray. There are many Scottish territorial, topographical and regional surnames. One view is that ‘Many of the first permanent (Scottish) surnames are territorial in origin’ see http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?r=551&560 accessed 8 February 2015. Ogilvie and Abercrombie are also surnames not based on descent from a Clan founder. Nor is Morrison, see page 6, A. W. Morrison, The Genealogy of the Morrison Origins in Scotland (2019).
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts accessed 17 March 2017. See also page 5 Lloyd and Jenny Laing The Picts and the Scots.
[15] Page 51, W. A. Cummins The Age of the Picts.
[16] Page 64, Gilbert Summers, Traditions of Scotland.
[17] Page 87, James Miller Portrait of Caithness and Sutherland.
[18] I thank Sir Charles Fraser for pointing out this comment from page 64, G. J. Summers Traditions of Scotland.
[19] Morven is the highest mountain in Caithness and lies north of Helmsdale, halfway between Kinbrace and Braemore.
[20] The Scarabens are a range of mountains about four kilometres in length, a little closer to Braemore than Morven and north of Helmsdale and Kildonan.
[21] Page 71, Ian Grimble, Clans and Chiefs.
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strathnaver accessed 5 March 2017.
[23] Pages 9-10, Ian Grimble, Chief of Mackay.
[24] ‘The common people of the (Gunn) clan were undoubtedly Pictish’ http://www.swanstrom.org/gunn.html accessed 9 January 2013.
[25] Drawn from page 123, Donald Omand, The Caithness Book.
[26] Page 87, John Haywood and Barry Cunliffe, The Historical Atlas of the Celtic World.
[27] See http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/picts/ accessed 8 March 2017. Or Wikipedia accessed 8 March 2017 said ‘Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes that were mentioned … on the world map of Ptolemy’.
[28] See http://www.clanntuirc.co.uk/JSNS/V9/Broderick%205.pdf accessed 7 August 2016; sections 3.7, 5.4 and 5.8.
[29] Page 155 W.F. H. Nicolaisen, Scottish Place Names.
[30] http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/articles/kingdom_of_the_picts/ accessed 17 December 2012.
[31] Mark Rugg Gunn writes, page 10, in his Clan Gunn that ‘The Scots spoke Gaelic, a tongue unintelligible to the Picts, and this language now spread along the paths of missionary endeavour, slowly displacing the Pictish dialects, so that by the time the Norsemen arrived in Scotland it had become the universal language of the people.’ This is questionable. To imply that it was all due to missionary endeavour is not supported by evidence. It is more useful to point out that the Scots of Dal Riata (western Scotland / Northern Ireland) probably absorbed the Pictish kingdom and Christianity was but a part of Dal Riata influence; the language of power and everyday life was Gaelic, not just the Church. The issue is when the Picts ‘lost’ their language and that’s just not clear.
[32] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 84 accessed 10 January 2013.
[33] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 78 including a list of some of the Gaelic origin named places accessed 10 January 2013.
[34] Page 127, Donald Omand, The Caithness Book.
[35] Norse ‘settlements gradually extended inland from the coastline, but not far, because of Celtic resistance’. Page 103, A.L. Lieforth, R.J. Munro The Scottish Invention of America, Democracy and Human Rights.
[36] In Caithness ‘there is not a single surviving or recorded place name of Norse origin, which incorporates an earlier Gaelic element, apart from perhaps Duncansby…’ http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 79 accessed 10 January 2013.
[37] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 77 accessed 10 January 2013.
[38] For a detailed life of Professor Nicolaisen see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._F._H._Nicolaisen.
[39] Prof. Bill Nicolaisen in ed. J. R. Baldwin, Caithness – A Cultural Crossroads Edinburgh 1982 Scottish Society for Northern Studies. See http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf for the original chapter.
[40] It is worth noting that at least one view of Clan Chattan gives descent from the Catti; if one Clan could descend from original inhabitants of an area so the Gunns could also descend from such original inhabitants. Pages 1- 5 Macpherson of Dalchully The Chiefs of Clan MacPherson.
[41] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 76 accessed 10 January 2013.
[42] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 77 accessed 11 January 2013.
[43] http://ssns.org.uk/resources/Documents/Books/Caithness_1982/05_Nicolaisen_Caithness_1982_pp_75-85.pdf page 77 accessed 10 January 2013.
[44] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pict accessed 25 January 2014.
[45] Page 10, Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba 789-1070 details the questionable history.
[46] Pages 19-21, W.A. Cumins, The Age of the Picts suggests the underlying truth in the legend is best viewed as assorted (perhaps seven) Pictish tribes unifying together for some reason. There is an Irish version for the origin of the Picts which is ‘neither convincing nor very interesting’.
[47] And the Shetlands were Innsi Catt (Isles of Cats) before the Norse; one would again expect some sort of archaeological evidence in support and there isn’t. And one would also expect the Orkneys to have had the same totemic nature but its name origin is not ‘cat’ but more ‘wild boar’. W.P.L. Thomson notes the problem of the lack of animal themes on Pictish sculptures. See Page 4, W.P.L. Thomson, The New History of Orkney.
[48] Some minor support can be found on a few Pictish carvings; see Charles Thomas, Gathering the Fragments.
[49] Page 142, W.A. Cumins, The Age of Picts.
[50] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-about-the-picts-886098.html accessed 18 March 2017.
[51] http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/picts/accessed 17 March 2017.
[52] Page 93 Rev. Angus Mackay, Sutherland and Caithness in Ancient Geography see http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_042/42_079_094.pdf accessed 14 March 2017. He qualifies the statement … ‘If our northern name, however had been originally derived from Old Gaelic cat, war, the present form would be the softened Cathaich, but instead of that it is the hard form Cattaich, meaning ‘pertaining to cats’. Now word pronunciation changes over time; modern pronunciation does not automatically invalidate an earlier alternative.
[53] Or ‘battle’. Page 566 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=V89aAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA566&dq=old+gaelic+cat+battle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjlr8KO_d3SAhXLD8AKHQ2oAfwQ6AEISjAJ#v=onepage&q=old%20gaelic%20cat%20battle&f=false accessed 17 March 2017.
[54] Another suggestion, which seems ignored, is that Cait means ‘high or steep’ in Gaelic. Page 135, Sir David Dalrymple, Annals of Scotland from the Accession of Malcolm III Surnamed Canmore to the Accession of Robert 1.
[55] Page 170, ed. Thomas Smibert The Clans of the Highlands of Scotland; being an account of their Annals, Separately & Collectively with delineations of Their Tartans, and Family Arms. See Appendix 5 for the complete entry.
[56] Pages 384-385, William Anderson, The Scottish Nation Volume II, 1867. The Welsh ‘gwyn’ is also of interest; it comes from the proto-Brythonic and proto-Celtic (as in, was probably the same language origin as early northern Scotland) with meanings of ‘white’ and ‘blessed’ but later meaning including ‘ridges’ and ‘complaints.’ So, were original Gunns of fair skin, living on the ridges, who ‘complained’?
[57] Page 360, James Logan, The Scottish Gael; or, Celtic Manners, As Preserved among the Highlanders.
[58] http://www.scotsites.co.uk/ebooks/sagatimechapter3.htm accessed 18 December 2012.
[59] Page 293 Frank Adam (rev. Sir Thomas Innes of Learney) The Clans Septs and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands. P.93 J. Haywood, The Historical Atlas of the Celtic World, also makes this point about Scandinavian settlement being more ‘modern’ Caithness and coastal Sutherland, although coastal Sutherland was not intensively settled and was really Pictish land and people.
[60] See Appendix 5 of this work.
[61] ‘Campbells – In Gaelic they are called Clan Guin...’ Page V of the Appendix of Col. David Stewart, Sketches of the Highlanders of Scotland Volume 2. The idea is also picked up in Scottish Studies, Volumes 17-19, page 11. So Campbells could be seen as a tribal group whose name originally was that which became Gunn. Thomas Sinclair, The Gunns, page 10, quotes the Rev. William Findlater observation that the Campbells and Gunns look the same with ‘dark eyes and dark complexion’; certainly not Scandinavian.
[62] Pages 170-171, ed. Thomas Smibert, The Clans of the Highlands of Scotland. I note the word ‘tribe’…
[63] See, for example, National Records of Scotland (NRS) records CS271/9785, CS271/8973, CS271/ 7810 and CS271/9662 – that record is for 1748 and concerns Alexander Gunn of Badenloch, later of Wester Helmsdale, who was MacHamish generation 10 number 19 and concerns a Court of Sessions battle with the Factor to the Earl of Sutherland. Alexander’s legal battles are explored in his life in chapter 10.