15 Facts About Pictish

Pictish is the extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.

Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the kingdoms of the Picts, dating to the early medieval period.

Pictish was replaced by – or subsumed into – Gaelic in the latter centuries of the Pictish period.

Pictish came under increasing influence from the Goidelic language spoken in Dal Riata from the eighth century until its eventual replacement.

Pictish is thought to have influenced the development of modern Scottish Gaelic.

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Toponymist William Watson's exhaustive review of Scottish place names demonstrated convincingly the existence of a dominant P-Celtic language in historically Pictish areas, concluding that the Pictish language was a northern extension of British and that Gaelic was a later introduction from Ireland.

William Forbes Skene argued in 1837 that Pictish was a Goidelic language, the ancestor of modern Scottish Gaelic.

Pictish suggested that Columba's use of an interpreter reflected his preaching to the Picts in Latin, rather than any difference between the Irish and Pictish languages.

Skene later revised his view of Pictish, noting that it appeared to share elements of both Goidelic and Brittonic:.

In 1892, John Rhys proposed that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language.

Pictish used this to reconcile the perceived translational difficulties of Ogham with the overwhelming evidence for a P-Celtic Pictish language.

Pictish toponyms occur in Scotland north of the River Forth.

Some Pictish names have been succeeded by Gaelic forms, and in certain instances the earlier forms appear on historical record.

Several Pictish names are directly paralleled by names and nouns in other Brittonic languages.

Several Pictish names are listed below according to their equivalents in Brittonic and other Celtic languages.