From Livingstone in Zambia to Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania, the names of famous Scottish explorers, scientists and leaders have been used as placenames right across the globe. There are also, in equal proportion, placenames that are named after a town, a village, river or a mountain in Scotland. In the concluding part of this feature on Scottish placenames, we take a look at those places that are named after an area of Scotland.

Well-known examples of places abroad that were given Scottish names include several major cities: Houston, Dallas, Knoxville, Albany, Calgary, Hamilton, Brisbane, Perth, Dunedin and Blantyre. Then there is Nova Scotia in Canada and the French territory of New Caledonia near Australia, the Murray river in Australia, the Mackenzie Mountains, River and Bay in Canada, and the Falkland Islands, South Shetland Islands and South Orkney Islands in the South Atlantic. But these are only the tip of the iceberg, a fact that becomes immediately apparent when studying detailed maps of provinces, counties and cities across the English-speaking world

The names of many towns, villages and regions from all over Scotland can be found abroad. The most commonly recurring seem to be Aberdeen, Argyle/Argyll, Balmoral, Bannockburn, Dunbarton/Dumbarton, Edinburgh, Dundee, Elgin, Fife, Glasgow, Glencoe, Glengarry, Glenmore, Highland, Inverness, Kelvin Grove, Kelso, Melrose, Midlothian, Montrose, Morningside, Perth, Rosslyn, St. Andrews, Stirling and Strathmore.

To take Aberdeen as an example, places with this name can be found in 15 American and three Australian states, as well as in Canada, Jamaica, Antigua, Guyana, South Africa and Sierra Leone. Perhaps the most famous example, known to seasoned travellers, is the picturesque but far from Scottish-looking settlement in Hong Kong. Glengarry is another popularly used name, the place in Ontario being particularly significant since it was the first Scottish settlement in Upper Canada. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, proved to be another evergreen and was often corrupted to Edinburg in the USA or Americanised to Edinboro. Edinburgh is also the name of the capital of the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha. The Gaelic form of Edinburgh, Dunedin, has also proved to be fairly popular, examples being the city of Dunedin in New Zealand and places in Florida and Ontario.

Stirling is another interesting Scottish place name that has travelled around the world. In addition to it being a suburban name in one American, one South African and three Australian cities, the name is also found in New Zealand and three Canadian provinces. Other examples include Australia's Stirling Creek and Stirling Range while one of the Solomon Islands is called Stirling. Mount Sterling in Kentucky owes its origin to a Scotsman, who named it for his home-town but over the years the spelling changed to Mount Sterling.

One of the most iconic of all the Scottish place names, Gretna, is to be found on occasion outside Scotland, including its use as the name of neighbourhoods in Chicago, New Orleans and Omaha. The little town of Gretna in Manitoba, Canada was so named by the Canadian Pacific Railroad because it was just over the border from the USA.

The Witteberge mountain range in South Africa's Eastern Cape has several peaks with Scottish names including Scotland's tallest mountains, Ben Nevis and Ben Macdhui. The Grampians gave their name to a mountain range and national park to the north-west of Melbourne, Australia, while Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh can also be found on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne, near Bridgetown in Barbados and in KwaZulu/Natal, South Africa. An example featuring an island is Orkney, which gave its name to a small town in Saskatchewan, a town in Kentucky and a gold mining town in South Africa.

The rivers Clyde, Tay, Tweed and Spey were a rich source of colonial place names, examples being Tay Valley in New Brunswick, Speyside west of Toronto and Tweed Heads on the Gold Coast of Australia. The Clyde has proved to be by the far the best travelled of these names. In the metropolitan areas alone, communities called Clyde can be found in Chicago, Detroit, Melbourne, Greater Newark (New Jersey), Providence (Rhode Island), the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle. Even the river's ancient Gaelic name, Clutha, is recalled in one or two place names in New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. Scotland's most visited loch, Loch Lomond, has namesakes in Atlanta (Loch Lomond Estates), Greater Washington DC (West Gate of Lomond) and Toowoomba (Glen Lomond), while the large lake near the airport at Saint John, New Brunswick is actually called Loch Lomond.

New Scottish names are being coined or adopted all the time, some examples being Melrose Park (Adelaide, 1989), Gowanbrae (Melbourne, 1990s) and Inverness (Calgary, early 2000s). As a result of anti-German feeling during World War I a large number of German place names were lost in Australia. Two of the many Scottish replacements were Aberfoyle Park in Adelaide and the Greater Brisbane suburb of Haigslea (known previously as Kirchheim, but changed to honour Scots-born General Haig).

Across the USA, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Zimbabwe, Scottish place names are found roughly in the ratio of one Scottish name to every four of English origin. Moreover, with a few notable exceptions, Scottish names appear to outnumber Irish ones by five to one, and Welsh ones by fifteen to one. There are large regional variations, of course. Very few Scottish place names are to be found in New England, especially Connecticut and Massachusetts, where English and indigenous names dominate the map. On the other hand, Scottish place names are found nearly as often as English ones in New Zealand's Otago Province, in many parts of Canada and in Greater Pittsburgh, a city which is today more closely associated with the Irish, Germans, Italians and Poles than with the Scots.

Johannesburg has possibly the world's largest cluster of contiguous suburbs with Scottish names outside Scotland, stretching nearly 10 kilometres (6 miles) from Blairgowrie in the west to Highlands North in the east. Similar, but less compact clusters can be found in the north-western suburbs of Baltimore, the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the southern suburbs of Adelaide and parts of Sydney and Metropolitan Washington DC.

Dunedin in New Zealand is in a league of its own. Founded by the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland in 1848, the city is proud of its Scots heritage, even down to naming its two main thoroughfares Princes Street and Georges Street, and its main creek Water of Leith, after their namesakes in Edinburgh. In fact, more than 40 per cent of Dunedin's suburbs and streets have Scottish names.

The astonishing number of place names around the world that have direct or indirect connections with Scotland is an enduring legacy of the major contribution made by the Scots and their descendants to the melting pot of cultures that have formed new societies in North America, Africa and the Antipodes.

Further Information:

Courtesy of Scottish Government - Scotland.org .

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