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Etymology of Skye


The etymology of Skye attempts to understand the derivation of the name of the island of Skye in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Skye's history includes the influence of Gaelic, Norse and English speaking peoples, and the relationships between their names for the island are not straightforward.

The Gaelic name for the "Isle of Skye" is An t-Eilean Sgitheanach (or Sgiathanach, a more recent and less common spelling). The meaning of this name is not clear. Various etymologies have been proposed, such as the "winged isle" or "the notched isle" but no definitive solution has been found to date and the placename may be from a substratum language and simply opaque.

For example, writing in 1549, Donald Munro, High Dean of the Isles wrote: "This Ile is callit Ellan Skiannach in Irish, that is to say in Inglish the wyngit Ile, be reason it has mony wyngis and pointis lyand furth fra it, throw the dividing of thir foirsaid Lochis".

This was by no means the first written reference. Roman sources refer to the Scitis (see the Ravenna Cosmography) and Scetis can be found on a map by Ptolemy. A possible derivation from *skitis, an early Celtic word for "winged", which may describe the island's peninsulas that radiate out from a mountainous centre, has also been suggested.

In the Norse sagas Skye is called Skíð, for example in the Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar saga and a skaldic poem in the Heimskringla from c. 1230 which contains a line that translates as "the hunger battle-birds were filled in Skye with blood of foemen killed". According to other authors, it was referred to in Norse as skuy (misty isle), *skýey or skuyö (isle of cloud). It is not certain whether the Gaelic poetic name for the island, Eilean a' Cheò "isle of the mist" precedes or postdates the Norse name. Some legends also associate the isle with the mythic figure of Queen Scáthach.

The problems with the proposed Gaelic etymologies can be summed up as follows. Firstly, the Gaelic word for "winged" is sgiathach and sgiathanach is not attested in Gaelic except in the place name and the ethnonym Sgiathanach "person from Skye". Secondly, the recorded pronunciations all point towards a clear [a] preceding the -ach ending: [s̪kʲiəhanəx], [s̪kʲiə.anəx], or [s̪kʲiaːnəx]. This means the form Sgiathanach is very unlikely to be based on the Gaelic plural of "wing" (sgiathan), which contains a schwa in the last syllable ([s̪kʲiəhən]) and would represent a highly unusual adjectival form based on a plural noun. Thirdly, the diminutive/nominaliser ending -an would result in [s̪kʲiəhan], with a clear [a] in the last syllable. This form sciathán or sgiathan is indeed attested in the modern Gaelic languages. The Old Irish attested form is scíath (cognate with modern Welsh ysgwydd "shoulder") with a reconstructed Celtic form *skeito-, which suggests the Irish form sgiathán is an innovation and an unlikely root for Sgiathanach. Finally, deriving the name from Scáthach involves two main problems: there would be a case of unexplained palatalisation of [s̪k] to [s̪kʲ] and an unexplained extra element -an-.


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