Pict

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Pict is a name first given by the Romans (in the form pictus) to name peoples they thought to be savage. It is said to be derived from - and is certainly influenced by - the verb pingere (past participle pictus, 'painted'), and refers to the (supposed) habit of such people of painting or tattooing their bodies. The Picts were such people living in what is now Scotland, mostly north of the Forth and Clyde. (There was also a group in west central France whom the Romans called Pictavi or pictones.)

The Picts inhabited Caledonia (the Roman name for the land north of 'the Wall' (Hadrian's Wall, or, from c.142CE to 160, the Antonine Wall). Caledonii may be the name of one of their tribes. They were not organized in a clearly defined state; the modern terms Pictish confederacy and Caledonian confederacy may reflect the nature of their resistance to the Roman advance.

After the Romans left, the Picts continued to be the power in an area known to the writers of the time as Pictavia - the part of modern Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus. (The name Pictavia is applied by Lewis and Short to Poitiers, in the territory of the pictavi.) The Picts were the only inhabitants of Scotland (though they may not have been a homogeneous people) until the arrival of the Scotii on the west coast around 500. The Scots' kingdom of Dál Riata [Dalriada] fought with the seven or so separate Pictish kingdoms until the rule of Kenneth Macalpine (Cinaed mac Alpin) (d. 858) is said to have united Dalriada and Pictavia, thus forming the kingdom of the Scots.

Little is clear about what they were like. It is not agreed that they were Celtic: some writers place them firmly as speakers of Brythonic Celtic on the basis of what survives of their language, mostly place-names and a few (unreadable) inscriptions in Ogham, but others dispute this. (OED only lists five words in English that may be derived from Pictish - but all are tentative and uncertain. 'Strath', "(in some early cases in a Brittonic language or Pictish)"; 'piece', "possible link with Pictish pit-, *pett; 'peat', "origin unknown, perhaps a borrowing of an unattested Pictish or Brittonic word"; 'month n.2 [i.e. not '30 days'], "< Scottish Gaelic monadh 'mountain', 'moor', probably (perhaps via Pictish) < the Brittonic base of Welsh mynydd 'mountain'"; 'Angus' , the place-name, " apparently named after one of several early medieval Pictish kings named Angus (Scottish Gaelic Aonghas, Early Irish Óengus; compare Pictish Onuist)" (AWE's underlining).

Some Pictish art and other material remains survive.