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The Romans called the tribes that inhabited what are today Scotland "Pictii", meaning "the Picts", meaning, "the painted ones", for their famous habit of stripping naked and painting themselves blue before battle. They called that land "Pictum".

"Scotii" was a Roman term for some of the people from the island they called "Hibernia", after the Hibernii (or Ivernii) tribes that lived there: Ireland.

The Scotii migrated from Hibernia into parts of Pictum, notably Dalriada, starting in earnest in the fourth century and continuing on until the Pictii and the Scotii were unified by marriage and conquest. Whether or not they were both completely Celtic peoples, or were a mix of Celts and whoever came before the Celts in the British Isles...or even if the same basic population was already there, and the Celtic "invasion" was more of a linguistic change than a population replacement is impossible to say.

Still, the big traces of history are that during the Roman period, the people sitting in what is today Scotland were not called Scots by the Romans, but Picts, and the land was Pictum. It became Scotland when the people called Scots by the Romans, who lived in Northern Ireland, began to settle and rule Dalriada and points inland.

Something roughly akin to the Ulster Plantation of the 1600s in reverse occurred in the 500s, 600s and 700s AD way up in the lands that were not, and never had been, within Roman rule.

Over time, of course, all of those ancient peoples turned into something else, and the modern day "Scots" are a hybrid not just of Irish and Pict, but also English and Norsemen, with some Spaniards and Portuguese and Basque fishermen thrown in. There is not a continuous, unbroken history of A people going back from today through Bannockburn to Hadrian's Wall and before. The place itself has changed names (from Pictum to Scotland...God knows what the natives called it, and its pretty certain that they didn't consider "it" to be an entity, just as there was no native word in any Indian language for the concept of "India" uniting the Dravidian and Aryan parts of India - it took the forced unity of the place under the British to create a national concept out of what was actually a divided and mutually inimical series of territories. The Picts, Scots, Caledonians and whatever other names that external visitors (who were rare) applied to the people of those wild and unorganized parts were not united in brotherly love or anything else. Nationalism is a relatively modern thing. Tribalism is ancient. Scots have killed other Scots more vigorously over the course of their history than they have united to kill anybody else. Ditto for Irish. Ditto for just about everybody, truth be known.

Yes, and the Romans ALSO USED THE WORD, "scot," to describe people "in the north" and elsewhere who remained outside their conquered realm.

Not like the Romans were limited to only one word for a huge range of peoples and areas in a complex cultural and military war.

Also, the Picts are a known people identified by region. The term, "scot" was a term used by Romans to identify a class of peoples in many/various/any region who remained unconqured. Among which some were Picts, yes, but it's a different concept of language.

This is such a simple thing and yet it's preposterous why it's so difficult for some here to grasp as to concept.

Let me think: a person who you don't like might be called "a jerk." To a Roman, a person unconquered by them -- not included in their conquering realm of culture/civilization -- was called "a scot."

Same concept in language.

The term, "scot," however, THEN AND LATER became adapted to mean, as would "jerk" if it was used at that time in the same concept, to represent generally people not conquered (not submitted) to invading Roman culture. If you interchange the two words, you'd get "Jerkland" for the area in which all the "jerks" habitated...

Not that I find present day Scotland the equivalent of a theoretical Jerkland (being part Scot myself), I am just trying to share an illustration of language.

Everyone not wearing a black coat could be called a "whitecoat." They could and can and probably are everywhere, in all areas of "the land." However, later, they concentrate their numbers out of protection for the right to not wear a black coat. Thus, the land in which they congregate might be called, "Whitecoatland." And among those who populate Whitecoatland are the Picts and others.

I hope that helps clarify a very simple point here. It seems that people are confused by the reapplication (reuptake) practice of having presentday witness to a regional, national area called "Scotland" and are unable to understand that THE WORD, 'SCOT' that was later incorporated as reference for a region, a "land," was based in Roman dialect for a human behavior, for and about humans who displayed a behavior, not were of a race or a nation or whatever. Just a behavior...they were "scots" -- people not submitted/submitting to Roman authority, remaining outside the occupied Roman territory, in their land of "scot."

Another/last thing is that in earlier English language, "the land," was an expression used to describe fifedoms, kingdoms, realms, areas occupied or not occupied -- however, not nations, which was until recent history, an unknown concept. Such that, it was a descriptive measure to call parts/directions in the world, "beyondland" or "edgeoftheworldland" or similar, as pretensive examples for to make a point here.

Thus, all those randy 'scots' who were concentrated later into areas where they could increase in numbers and resistance were occupying the "scotland." And, it became a popular term to describe a behavior later, and thus, we got "Scotland" later as official term for a nation.

The area we refer present day to as "Ireland" was considered by the Romans as the same as that to the north of their occupied territory in Britain. Thus, the Romans called all of those unoccupied/unconquerables, "scots" and they included the range outside their occupied areas in Britain....Ireland, however, rejected the term later and once better organized, found it's own name apart from those to the East, among other reasons.