Ulster-Scots

"Ulster-Scots" is a term mainly used in Ireland and Britain ("Scotch-Irish" is commonly used in North America) to describe Scottish Presbyterians, descendants from mainly from the Scottish Lowlands, who migrated to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland), largely across the 17th century.

Considerable numbers later settled in the North American colonies through the 18th century. Disdaining the heavily English regions on the Atlantic coast because of past hostilities, the Ulster-Scots settlers crossed into the western mountains, where their descendants would populate the southern Appalachian regions and the Ohio Valley, before spreading west across the entire nation.

Today, over an estimated 20 million Americans can trace the roots of at least one family member to these settlers with at least one-third of the President of the United States having had ancestral links.

Scotch-Irish teminology

The term "Scotch-Irish" is a North American generic description used since settlement and still actively used there today to describe descendents of Scottish Presbyterians who first migrated to Ulster and later settled in North America through the 18th century. Other names, including Northern Irish and "Irish Presbyterians", were also used to describe these people.

It is believed that these already century-settled immigrants, now well established in American society, increasingly referred to themselves as "Scotch-Irish" in order to distinguish themselves as having Scottish origins against the later indigenous Irish arrivals of mainly Catholic origin who arrived in more substantial numbers in America after the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.

Confusingly, "Scotch-Irish" does not stand for a genetic combination of Scottish and Irish and is therefore considered to be less accurately descriptive than "Ulster-Scots". Even though the term "Scotch-Irish" has been in use for several centuries in that context, it is uncommon in the United Kingdom, where people may not understand it.

The linguist R. J. Gregg also used the term "Scotch-Irish" to refer to the contact variety of the Scots language spoken in Ulster.

Furthermore, as people from Scotland nowadays insist on referring to themselves as only "Scots" or "Scottish", the old term of Scotch is assumed to be incorrect and thus mistakenly amended as Scots-Irish. This should be avoided as "Scots-Irish" relates only to a standard genetic combination of today's Scottish and Irish people, and not to the specific group of Scottish Presbyterians descendents that settled in North America several centuries ago.

See also

• History of Northern Ireland
• History of Scotland
• Immigration to the United States
• Ulster
• Ulster Scots language
• Hiberno-Scots

External links

• BBC Ulster Scots Voices (http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/learning/voices/ulsterscots/)
• Scotch-Irish.net (http://www.scotchirish.net/)
• Scotch-Irish Society of North Carolina (http://www.scotch-irishsociety.org/)
• The Institute of Ulster Scots Studies (http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/ulsterscots/)
• The Ulster Scots Society of America (http://www.electricscotland.com/history/ulster_scots/)
• Ulter Scots Agency (http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com)

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