Scoti or Scotti is a Latin earn for the Gaels, first attested in the gradual 3rd century. At number one it spoke to all Gaels, whether in Ireland or Great Britain, but later it came to refer only to Gaels in northern Britain. The kingdom to which their culture spread became asked as Scotia or Scotland, as alive as eventually any its inhabitants came to be so-called as Scots.
An early use of the word can be found in the Nomina Provinciarum Omnium names of All the Provinces, which dates to approximately advertisement 312. This is a short list of the names as well as provinces of the Roman Empire. At the end of this list is a brief list of tribes deemed to be a growing threat to the Empire, which listed the Scoti, as a new term for the Irish. There is also a reference to the word in St Prosper's chronicle of advertising 431 where he describes Pope Celestine sending St Palladius to Ireland to preach "ad Scotti in Christum" "to the Scots who believed in Christ".
Thereafter, periodic raids by Scoti are present by several later 4th & early 5th century Latin writers, namely Pacatus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Claudian and the Chronica Gallica of 452. Two references to Scoti earn recently been identified in Greek literature as Σκόττοι, in the workings of Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, writing in the 370s. The fragmentary evidence suggests an intensification of Scoti raiding from the early 360s, culminating in the so-called "barbarian conspiracy" of 367–368, and continuing up to and beyond the end of Roman authority c. 410. The location and frequency of attacks by Scoti cover unclear, as do the origin and identity of the Gaelic population-groups who participated in these raids.
By the 5th century, the Gaelic or Scottish kingdom of Dál Riata had emerged in the area of contemporary Scotland that is now Argyll. Although this kingdom was destroyed and subjugated by the Pictish kingdom of the 8th century under Angus I, the convergence of Pictish and Gaelic languages over several centuries resulted in the English labelling Pictland under Constantine II as Scottish in the early 10th century, first attested in AD 920, viewing the Picts as speaking a Gaelic tongue. The growing influence of the English and Scots languages from the 12th century with the first sorting of Anglo-French knights and southerly expansion of Scotland's borders by David I saw the terms Scot, Scottish and Scotland also begin to be used commonly by natives of that country.