Talk:Scottish people

Facts, stop stupid propaganda.

Since the advent of modern genetic research every serious geneticist knows that the Scots come mainly from Spain (well over 70% of the present population). The fact that people here go to all lengths to hide their own past, their own ancestors and their own blood (DNA)is pathetic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQHX_MwhN80

Boo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.125.185.140 (talk) 01:20, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

This is far outside the scope of Scottish people and is covered by Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA). Of course, the topic is nowhere near as simple as the Youtube clip claims. Catfish Jim & the soapdish 07:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Sure. "The video Clip". You mean Spencer Wells, The National Geographic, Brian Sykes, Stephen Oppenheimer, Cunliffe, etc. But sure "the video clip". Sorry but I find it all so pathetic. Boo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.125.185.140 (talk) 20:23, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you familiar with the current literature? Here's one to start you off with. Catfish Jim & the soapdish 21:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Who do you want to manipulate? That is the only single article with that opinion, from 2009. All the above authors support the same theory and have written several books about it, not just one article. It is people like you that go around showing this single article and ignoring the majority of authors, books and studies. (By the way an article that fails to explain why R1b is most concentrated in Spain, the British Isles and France while it is almost non-existent in the Near East or outside of "Atlantic Europe", and I write "Atlantic Europe" like that because in Spain, with the exception of the Basque country, it is densest in the Mediterranean). What is more you ignore all the others and brandish this single article as the Bible. Even that article recognizes the female ancestry as coming from Iberia, or Spain and Portugal. But of course do not mention it¡. All the people with big agendas, that dominate these articles, use the same only article to write most articles now in Wiki relating to this matter. But, of course, Spencer Wells did not read this article when the clip was recorded a few months ago. You have now almost half a dozen books published in the 21st century dealing with the same issue and coming to the same conclusion and people like you always come up with the single, only article that comes only partly with the Neolithic theory (on the male side, not on the female). I do not believe that you people are that ignorant. I know that you have big agendas. Time will eventually judge you. Even in Wiki. Boo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.125.185.140 (talk) 23:57, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Um... sure. Not quite sure what agenda you're seeing there.WP:AGF and all that. The article was published in January 2010 by the way.Catfish Jim & the soapdish 00:31, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

You've posted almost identical topics to Talk:Nordic race, Talk:Scottish people, Talk:Hispanic and Talk:Genetic history of the British Isles. As per WP:MULTI, please limit the thread to one talk page (I suggest Talk:Genetic history of the British Isles as it is the most relevant) to avoid fragmentation of the discussion. Catfish Jim & the soapdish 08:15, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

If the IP thinks there is an argument that is in the academic literature and ought to be represented in Wikipedia, they should come up with a useful source. If they can't find one then there is no point discussing this any further. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:05, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

In Origins of the British (2006), Stephen Oppenheimer states (pages 375 and 378):

"By far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia (Spain and Portugal), ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales and 93% Castlerea, Ireland. On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipeout theory..."

"...75-95% of British Isles (genetic) matches derive from Iberia... Ireland, coastal Wales, and central and west-coast Scotland are almost entirely made up from Iberian founders, while the rest of the non-English parts of the British Isles have similarly high rates. England has rather lower rates of Iberian types with marked heterogeneity, but no English sample has less than 58% of Iberian samples..."

In page 367 Oppenheimer states in relation to Zoë H Rosser's pan-European genetic distance map:

"In Rosser's work, the closest population to the Basques is in Cornwall, followed closely by Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and then northern France."

In his 2006 book Blood of the Isles (published in the United States and Canada as Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland), Sykes examines British genetic "clans". He presents evidence from mitochondrial DNA, inherited by both sexes from their mothers, and the Y chromosome, inherited by men from their fathers, for the following points:

• The genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland is overwhelmingly what it has been since the Neolithic period and to a very considerable extent since the Mesolithic period, especially in the female line, i.e. those people, who in time would become identified as British Celts (culturally speaking), but who (genetically speaking) should more properly be called Cro-Magnon. In continental Europe, this same Cro-Magnon genetic legacy gave rise to the Basques. But both "Basque" and "Celt" are cultural designations not genetic ones and therefore to call a Celt "Basque" or a Basque "Celtic", is a fallacy.

• The contribution of the Celts of central Europe to the genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland was minimal; most of the genetic contribution to the British Isles of those we think of as Celtic, came from western continental Europe, I.E. the Atlantic seaboard.

• The Picts were not a separate people: the genetic makeup of the formerly Pictish areas of Scotland shows no significant differences from the general profile of the rest of Britain. The two "Pictland" regions are Tayside and Grampian.

• The Anglo-Saxons are supposed, by some, to have made a substantial contribution to the genetic makeup of England, but in Sykes's opinion it was under 20 percent of the total, even in southern England.

• The Vikings (Danes and Norwegians) also made a substantial contribution, which is concentrated in central, northern, and eastern England - the territories of the ancient Danelaw. There is a very heavy Viking contribution in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, in the vicinity of 40 percent. Women as well as men contributed substantially in all these areas, showing that the Vikings engaged in large-scale settlement.

• The Norman contribution was extremely small, on the order of 2 percent.

• There are only sparse traces of the Roman occupation, almost all in southern England.

• In spite of all these later contributions, the genetic makeup of the British Isles remains overwhelmingly what it was in the Neolithic: a mixture of the first Mesolithic inhabitants with Neolithic settlers who came by sea from Iberia and ultimately from the eastern Mediterranean.

• There is a difference between the genetic histories of men and women in Britain and Ireland. The matrilineages show a mixture of original Mesolithic inhabitants and later Neolithic arrivals from Iberia, whereas the patrilineages are much more strongly correlated with Iberia. This suggests (though Sykes does not emphasize this point) replacement of much of the original male population by new arrivals with a more powerful social organization.

• There is evidence for a "Genghis Khan effect", whereby some male lineages in ancient times were much more successful than others in leaving large numbers of descendants; e.g. Niall of the Nine Hostages in 4th and 5th century Ireland and Somerled in 12th century Scotland.

Some quotations from the book follow. (Note that Sykes uses the terms "Celts" and "Picts" to designate the pre-Roman inhabitants of the Isles who spoke Celtic and does not mean the people known as Celts in central Europe.) “

[T]he presence of large numbers of Jasmine’s Oceanic clan … says to me that there was a very large-scale movement along the Atlantic seaboard north from Iberia, beginning as far back as the early Neolithic and perhaps even before that. …The mere presence of Oceanic Jasmines indicates that this was most definitely a family based settlement rather that the sort of male-led invasions of later millennia.[4] ” “

The Celts of Ireland and the Western Isles are not, as far as I can see from the genetic evidence, related to the Celts who spread south and east to Italy, Greece and Turkey from the heartlands of Hallstadt and La Tene...during the first millennium BC…The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or about the same time as farming reached the Isles. (…)

The connection to Spain is also there in the myth of Brutus…. This too may be the faint echo of the same origin myth as the Milesian Irish and the connection to Iberia is almost as strong in the British regions as it is in Ireland. (…)

They [the Picts] are from the same mixture of Iberian and European Mesolithic ancestry that forms the Pictish/Celtic substructure of the Isles.[5] ” “

Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantis chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes…I can find no evidence at all of a large-scale arrival from the heartland of the Celts of central Europe amongst the paternic genetic ancestry of the Isles… can[6] (Something smells rotten in the sate of Wikipedia: Nordicists?". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.18.42.143 (talk) 18:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Consensus for removal of referenced material?

Thesouthernhistorian45 has twice attempted to remove a section of text from the Scottish ancestry abroad subheading. The removed text is as follows:

It is estimated that there are more than 27 million descendants of the Scots-Irish migration now living in the U.S.

"Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America". Powells.com. 12 August 2009. http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780767916899-1. Retrieved 30 April 2010. 

The rationale for this removal is that the editor gave is: That may be true but Jim Webb's book is at best a fringe-source at worse profoundly unscholarly, revisionist and packed full of racialist psuedo-science.

I've reverted this for the moment as it seems a little POV. The book accompanies a major STV/UTV television documentary series on the Ulster Scots and for the purposes of Wikipedia, would seem to be a reliable source. Catfish Jim & the soapdish 10:48, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Robertson

As the Robertson family, as well as a long line of Scottish kings, had their origin in Athol, we shall give a description of Athol.

The Robertson family, or rather the ancestors of that family, before the surname of Robertson was assumed, was the Royal Family of Scotland for three hundred years, from Duncan I. to Alexander III. on the male line, and down to James VI. on the female line.

As the Robertson family, as well as a long line of Scottish kings, had their origin in Athol, we shall give a description of Athol.

The Robertson family, or rather the ancestors of that family, before the surname of Robertson was assumed, was the Royal Family of Scotland for three hundred years, from Duncan I. to Alexander III. on the male line, and down to James VI. on the female line.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.207.38.134 (talk) 02:28, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Descendants of the Irish

Are not the Scots descended from the Irish? There is a theory that they are ultimately descended from an Egyptian called Scotia, although this is a rather far-fetched theory that would only need at most very cursory mention in the article! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 09:12, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

How could the Scottish be descended from the Irish if Scotland was permanently habitated by humans several thousand years before a permanent human settlement even existed in Ireland. I think you'll find if anything it would be the complete opposite of what you are saying. Of course most Irish Americans seem to think the Irish sprang up out of the ground in Ireland don't they ? It was actually around 2000 years later that Ireland was inhabited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.199.128 (talk) 16:14, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

He means the modern scots. The scotti tribe where irishmen and women who conquered have of scotland and drove out most of the the native picts or interbred with them creating the modern scots along with later viking and norse breeding creating the modern scottish people so yes the scots are 3/4 irish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.71.5.130 (talk) 12:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Outwith

Resolved

I am writing this because a revert to my edit on this page invited me to engage in discussion to resolve the conflict. Here is my case: while the word 'outwith' may indeed be a Scottish dialect word, this encyclopaedia does not use Scottish dialect words in any of its other articles, so why this one? According to the Wikipedia Manual Of Style, Plain English is what this encyclopaedia is to be written in. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 18:22, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Where does it say that 'outwith' is a dialect word? As far as I am aware, it is regarded as a standard English word in Scotland. Cheers Fishiehelper2 (talk) 21:33, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, why not ask on the language reference desk? I'm pretty sure we'll arrive at some sort of consensus there. By the way, Googling 'outwith' gives me pages and pages of definitions of the word, rather than the word in actual use, showing how rare it is in standard English (or even any English). Also, every one of those definitions says 'in Scotland'. A dialect is defined as "A particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group." If this word is only used in Scotland, then it is dialect. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 23:26, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

"Outwith" is a solitary word, not "a form of language", and one which is perfectly standard and widespread in Scottish Standard English, formal or otherwise. Regarding dialects/national varieties in use in Wikipedia, the case for the Scottish variety is no different to that of American English, British English, Australian English. Also see WP:ENGVAR.

It may not surprise you that has arisen before, e.g. here. Hope you're sitting comfortably... Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:54, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Hence, "dialect word", used above. And yes, I see now that the discussion has been raised before. In fact, I've seen similar discussions all over the internet since I've been in this discussion here with you guys. It does indeed seem to be a Scottish dialect word (see post below for more info). It's a new one to me. Cheers. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:44, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

If one takes a look at the top of this Talk page one can see a notice which reads: "This article uses Scottish English dialect and spelling. Some terms that are used in it differ from or are not used in British, American or other dialects of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus." Links are duly provided. For the record, I found KageTora's edit summary inflammatory. Keeping it professional avoids run-ins with Admins, who generally consider abusive Edit summaries as the lowest of the low.--Mais oui! (talk) 05:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Apologies, I did not see the big box at the top explaining that the article uses Scottish English - my oversight, but I generally delve in to get the info I am looking for from pages, rather than reading things about the pages themselves. I'll pay more attention to them in future. The dialect word can stay in, then, without further discussion. As for the edit summary, there is nothing whatsoever inflammatory about "(replaced nonsensical or dialect word 'outwith' with 'outside' - Reason: not a quote.) from someone who does not speak Scottish dialect and has never heard or seen this word before, and therefore thought it to be a nonsensical word (maybe a result of a poor edit or even vandalism - but I didn't check the reams of edit history pages for the article - maybe I should have). I gave an edit summary, and even gave a reason. I then engaged you all in discussion as per the invitation in the revert. You have presented your case, and I have accepted it and backed down. I don't see what is unprofessional about that. For the record, Mais Oui, maybe you are just being oversensitive. As you say, let's keep it professional. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:40, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

[EDIT- I am adding a 'resolved' box, as I think we have reached agreement]. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Glad to see the issue is resolved and I accept your edit summary was in good faith, though nonetheless ill-advised. No worries but I hope you now realise how inflammatory such a comment may appear and may lead other editors to dismiss any merits of your argument in the face of the belittling of a particular form of English by, effectively, equating dialect with nonsense. Wikipedia in its entirety is written in one English dialect or another and the fact that the Scottish and Northern English ones are comparatively small doesn't diminish their validity. Your willingness to engage and your openness to the responses in the aftermath is commendable though. All the best. Mutt Lunker (talk) 09:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for that reply - I accept your acceptance. Just to further clarify the matter of the supposedly inflammatory edit summary - I did, in fact, write 'nonsensical or dialect word'. I did not equate the dialect with nonsense. My summary was clear that the word must be either dialect (hence 'dialect word') or not English (hence 'nonsense'). It was thence concluded upon further investigation by us all that the word in question was in fact dialect and not nonsense. It is difficult to make it any clearer than this. Also, I do understand how people may misread what they read on the internet - this kind of thing happens to many of us on a daily basis, which is why we should assume good faith. Anyway, thanks a lot and happy editing. KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 11:33, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Likewise, please re-read my post above and assume others also AGF. I was talking about how "inflammatory (your) comment may appear", with no judgement on the intent, and as friendly advice for the future rather than to have a go. Your listing of two possible designations for the word, "nonsense" or "dialect", implies that each reason would make the word equally unsuitable - thus equating them as reasons for amendment. Nonsense, clearly ought to be corrected. You were previously of the opinion that dialect should be "corrected". You are now, following the debate, of the opinion that differing varieties of English are, or may be, in fact valid for inclusion so you are thus no longer equating these as reasons for amendment. And I think everybody is happy. Hope that clarifies it. Best. Mutt Lunker (talk) 12:53, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Which Scotland?

Needs to be some care here to distinguish 'Scotland' at different times in history. Long ago Scotland was just one small kingdom (the land of the Scots)amongst several in today's Scotland. Similary 'England' was just the area of 'Angleland' AKA the Kingdom of Wessex, only part of modern England. In fact Southern Scotland today was once part of another British kingdom, Northumbria, which was itself an 'Anglish' kingdon. Scottish nationalists will hate the idea, but millions of Scots must be ethnically more 'English' than many people in England who live in those large parts of today's England which were never 'Anglish'. The Scots just incorporated other kingdoms into their own - as did the English - until the present boundaries were reached. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.22.62 (talk) 19:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Already covered under The ethnic groups of Scotland section. The Anglic heritage in Scotland is uncontroversial, whether nationalist or not (unless you're really digging for fringe nutters). Don't get confused betwen Angles and English: in England areas that were formerly Saxon or Jutic are just as much English as those that were Anglic. What's more, the article is Scottish People, not Scotland. Mutt Lunker (talk) 21:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)