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Scotch vs. Scots and Scottish[edit]

This article uses "Scotch" in reference to **Scots** (persons of Scottish heritage). I've heard that this is not considered to be correct usage by at least some folks. For example: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/27860 ("One cynical joke is that Scotch can be used only for things which can be bought, such as whisky, eggs and politicians"). For another is the witticism about how a person is a Scot, while Scotch refers to the contents of his belly.

Additionally the usage sounds off to me, perhaps over-sensitive, ear.

The dictionary definitions suggest that it's not, technically, an error in the usage. But I wonder if this article might be improved by changing such references to respect these sensibilities. While I understand and respect Wikipedia:Be_bold, I feel like it would be better to discuss here in Talk: before doing so.

JimD (talk) 19:19, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Scotch" in this sense is Victorian-era English and should not be used here except in a direct quotation. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:04, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion[edit]

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People of Scots descent in Scotland[edit]

The article itself contained some discussion, jammed into the infobox, that I've moved to the talk page. Actually, after digging up attribution from diffs, they're both from the same person. These were from the "Scotland: 4,446,000 (2011) (Scottish descent only.)" line in the infobox:

Possibly another 500,000 who identify as British. This still means they are Scottish, ethnically and by heritage. But it’s hard to measure.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coronaverification (talk • contribs) 18:32, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Although unlike England, many Scots don’t identify as British. But unionists in Scotland tend to. This does not mean they do not have Scottish heritage and are not a member of Scottish people simply for identifying as British. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coronaverification (talk • contribs) 18:24, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Additional sources[edit]

Some stuff to look for:

Devine, T. M. (2012) [2011]. To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora: 1750–2010. Penguin. ISBN 9780141015644.
Devine, T. M. (2012). Scotland's Empire: The Origins of the Global Diaspora. Penguin. ISBN 9780718193195. – Differs from the above in focusing more on Scotland's role in the British Empire, and the British diaspora more broadly, so perhaps of less interest/relevance.
Devine, T. M. (2019). The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed. Penguin. ISBN 9780141985930. – Covers Highland and Lowland, and emigration.
Armitage, David. "The Scottish Diaspora". In Wormald, Jenny (ed.). Scotland: A History. Oxford University Press. pp. 272–303. ISBN 9780198206156.
Ascherson, Neal (2004). Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland. Hill & Wang. ISBN 9780809088454. – Has a chapter on "the peculiar nature of [Scotland's] diaspora".
Calder, Jenni (2010) [2005]. Scots in the USA. New York: Luath.
McCarthy, Angela; MacKenzie, John M., eds. (2016). Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474410045.
Newton, Michael Steven (2014). "The Gaelic Diaspora in North America". In Stewart Leith, Murray; Sim, Duncan (eds.). The Modern Scottish Diaspora: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 136–152. doi:10.3366/j.ctt1g09zmf. ISBN 9780748681402. – Entire book will probably be of relevance. This was originally an expensive academic issue, but is now available used for around US$15. Significant parts of the content can be Google-previewed here [1].
Newton, Michael Steven, ed. (2013). Celts in the Americas. Sydney, Nova Scotia: Cape Breton University Press / Nimbus Publishing. ISBN 9781897009758. – "This volume contains a selection of the best papers from the conference, ﬁve invited chapters, and an introduction, for a total of nearly 149,000 words." Also covers Irish, Welsh, etc.
Newton, Michael Steven. "Diaspora". In Innes, Sìm; Kidd, Sheila (eds.). The International Companion to Scottish Gaelic Literature. Scottish Literature International / ASLS. – Seems to be still forthcoming, so maybe late 2023 or 2024.
Newton, Michael Steven (2011). "Scotland's Two Solitudes Abroad: Scottish Gaelic Immigrant Identity and Culture in North America". In Campbell, Jodi A.; Ewan, Elizabeth; Parker, Heather (eds.). The Shaping of Scottish Identities: Sex, Nation, and the Worlds Beyond. "Guelph Series in Scottish Studies". Guelph: Centre for Scottish Studies. pp. 215–233. ISBN 9780889555891.
Newton, Michael Steven (2007). "Gaelic Literature and the Diaspora". In Manning, Susan; Brown, Ian; Clancy, Thomas; Pittock, Murray (eds.). Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature. Vol. 2: Enlightenment, Britain and Empire (1707–1918). Edinburgh University Press. pp. 353–359. doi:10.3366/j.ctt1g09x78. ISBN 9780748624812. – This is a very expensive academic volume.
Newton, Michael Steven (2014). "Scottish Americans". In Riggs, Thomas (ed.). Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America (3rd ed.). Gale Cengage / SAGE. ISBN 9780787675509. – 4-vol. set of very expensive textbooks. Contains 152 essays, and I don't know which volume Newton's is in. Best gotten via inter-library loan, or a university campus library.
Pittock, Murray (2022). Scotland: The Global History, 1603 to the Present. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300254174. – Is a general history, but does address the diaspora and Scotland's modern relation to it.
Ray, Celeste (2001). Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807849132. – Seems to focus on Highland games events in the US South – Publishers Weekly: "A combination of resource compendium, exhaustively detailed anthropological study and astute cultural criticism. Extensive research, clear prose and respect for her subjects will win this authoritative work favor among Scottish American enthusiasts and academics alike."
Ray, Celeste, ed. (2005). Transatlantic Scots. The University of Alabama Press. ISBN 9780817314736 – via Internet Archive. – Has extensive chapters by 7 or 8 authors. Includes Australia in some of Ray's material, but no dedicated chapter about it; the book is mostly about Canada and the US.
- Ray, Celeste (2005). "Scottish immigration and ethnic organization in the United States". In Ray, Celeste (ed.). Transatlantic Scots. The University of Alabama Press. pp. 48–95. ISBN 9780817314736 – via Internet Archive. – This particular chapter sounds valuable: "sketches brief immigration histories of the different Scottish ethnic groups in colonial times and considers how the ethnic divides between Scots, so important in the 18th century, were downplayed through Scottish ethnic organizations in the 19th. The chapter concludes with descriptions of the Scottish-American community and ethnic organization and heritage activities today" (among other material).
- Ray, Celeste (2005). "Transatlantic Scots and ethnicity". In Ray, Celeste (ed.). Transatlantic Scots. The University of Alabama Press. pp. 21–47. ISBN 9780817314736 – via Internet Archive.
- Ray, Celeste (2005). "Bravehearts and Patriarchs. Masculinity on the Pedestal in Southern Scottish Heritage Celebration". In Ray, Celeste (ed.). Transatlantic Scots. The University of Alabama Press. pp. 232–262. ISBN 9780817314736 – via Internet Archive.
- Other pieces include: Ray, Celete; "Scottish Immigration and Ethnic Organization in the United States". Vance, Michael; "A Brief History of Organized Scottishness in Canada". Bennett, Margaret; "From the QuebecHebrideans to les Écossais-Québécois: Tracing the Evolution of a Scottish Cultural Identity in Canada’s Eastern Townships". Vance, Michael; "Powerful Pathos: The Triumph of Scottishness in Nova Scotia". Dembling, Jonathan; "You Play It as You Would Sing It: Cape Breton, Scottishness, and the Means of Cultural Production". Jarvie, Grant; "The North American Émigré, Highland Games, and Social Capital in International Communities". Hook, Andrew; "Troubling Times in the Scottish-American Relationship". Sheets, John W.; "Finding Colonsay's Emigrants and a 'Heritage of Place'". Basu, Paul; "Pilgrims to the Far Country: North American 'Roots-Tourists' in the Scottish Highlands and Islands". Cowan, Edward J.; "Tartan Day in America". McArthur, Colin; "Transatlantic Scots, Their Interlocutors, and the Scottish Discursive Unconscious".
Ray, Celeste (Summer 1998). "Scottish Heritage Southern Style". Southern Cultures. 4 (2): 28–45. – Seems to focus on Highland games events in the US South.
Ray, Celeste (2012). "Ancestral clanscapes and transatlantic tartaneers". In Varricchio, Mario (ed.). Back to Caledonia: Scottish Homecomings from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. Birlinn. pp. 168–188. ISBN 9781906566449. – This book is probably the only one on return migration of the diaspora back to Scotland (though I think there's an article at least partly about this in From Tartan to Tartanry as well), and actually covers the 17th century to 21st. Detailed review in Scottish Affairs [2].
Ritchie, John (December 2019). "Sir Harry Lauder and the Scots Diapora: Cementing Identity Through Stage and Screen". Visual Culture in Britain. 20 (3): 278–295. doi:10.1080/14714787.2019.1688675.
Sumner, Natasha; Doyle, Aidan, eds. (2020). North American Gaels: Speech, Song, and Story in the Diaspora. McGill–Queen's University Press. ISBN 9780228003793.
"Diaspora Engagement Plan – Reaching Out to Scotland's International Family". Gov.scot. Scottish Government. 14 September 2010. Archived from the original on 25 January 2019 – via National Records of Scotland. – This was surprisingly elusive given how many sources cited it. NB: There are some other relevant Scottish Government publications (both earlier and later) listed here.
"Scotland's International Framework: US Engagement Strategy". Gov.scot. Scottish Government External Affairs Directorate. 30 March 2017. ISBN 9781786528698.
Leith, Murray Stewart; Sim, Duncan (October 7, 2022). "Scottish Connections (diaspora) work: Qualitative research". University of the West of Scotland / Scottish Government External Affairs Directorate. ISBN 9781804358900 – via Gov.scot.
Wilkie, Benjamin (2017). The Scots in Australia, 1788–1938. "Scottish Historical Review Monographs" Second Series. Woodbridge, Western Australia: Boydell Press. ISBN 9781783272563. CambridgeCore URL [3] (access: subscription).
Fischer, David Hackett (1989). Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. "America: A Cultural History" series. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195069051. - blurbs don't make it clear what the "four" are, exactly. And British != Scottish, but it probably includes Scotland, or it would have said English.
Zumkhawala-Cook, Ricahrd (Spring 2005). "The Mark of Scottish America: Heritage Identity and the Tartan Monster". Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. 14 (1). University of Toronto Press: 109–136. doi:10.1353/dsp.0.0009.
Wokeck, Marianne (1999). Trade in Strangers: The Beginning of Mass Migration to North America. College Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 9780271018331. – "Assesses the volume, character, and motivations" for various groups' emigration, including Scottish among many others.
Grosjean, Alexia; Murdoch, Steve, eds. (2005). Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period. "Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions" series vol. 107. Brill. ISBN 9789004143067. – This is an expensive academic volume, and not available through Internet Archive Open Library, so probably an inter-library loan item.

Requests for fixes[edit]

I have inserted a number of requests for fixes in the article, especially in the part about the United States. The statistics presented in that section are in general ill-defined and seriously flawed. Ehrenkater (talk) 18:13, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You'll need to be more specific. We have to work with the sources we have, and if they are not narrowly definitional, then we cannot be either, per WP:OR. It's just the nature of the beast that ancestry self-identifications in polls and the like are dependent on, well, self-identification, which may be based on very partial ancestry. There isn't anything practical to do about that. Do you have a particular issue to raise about a particular source? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:56, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Someone (Ehrenkater) put the following long-form comment into the article itself; I've moved it to the talk page for discussion:

The huge change between 1980 and 1990 demonstrates that the figures (whatever they are supposed to represent) have not been prepared on a consistent basis, and hence are meaningless.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you are right that we can't make up data. As there is no reliable data, then we shouldn't imply that there is reliable data. (Presenting data in a table, at ten year intervals, implies that the user can identify trends from this data, which is clearly not the case.) That means deleting most of the stuff, and very carefully explaining the limitations of whatever is left in. As a partly separate issue, the presentation of the table with the ampersands is very unclear, and I don't know what to make of it until it is clarified. There are also inconsistencies between the numbers and the percentages columns, and between the table and the numbers given in the prose.---Ehrenkater (talk) 21:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"there is no reliable data" is a curious and unevidenced assertion. The data is generally as reliable as any other data based on self-reported ethnicity (e.g. Hispanic population by US state, etc.). That 1980 has produced a problematic numbers is something to explain below the table and perhaps with a footnote directly attached to the implausibly low count that year for "Scots-Irish". That doesn't mean the entire table should be destroyed. May I suggest you do some actual research to find better numbers, instead of just complaining, and proposing destructive courses of action, and inappropriately peppering the article with long-winded questions and annotations? That is not the purpose of the ((Fix)) template. Talk pages exist for a reason. "implies that the user can identify trends from this data" – no, that's your personal inference. The table is simply a summary of the material presented in textual form below it, because some people find such a presentation easier than long blocks of prose. "That means deleting most of the stuff" – no, it doesn't, since it's properly sourced and seems to be the best data we have available; if you think it's not, then go find and cite the better data. "very carefully explaining the limitations of whatever is left" – Yes, feel free to do that, if you can do it without engaging in OR. "the presentation of the table with the ampersands is very unclear, and I don't know what to make of it until it is clarified". It's not unclear at all. It really, really, really clearly refers to the column just before it, with "Scottish & Scots Irish". How is this confusing to you? And why do you knep insisting on injecting you questions and commentary into the article prose instead of using the talk page like everyone else, after your question/comment injections have already been reverted and you've been asked to stop doing that? You're doing violence to the article for no explicable reason. "There are also inconsistencies between the numbers and the percentages columns, and between the table and the numbers given in the prose" – Then feel free to fix them to better agree with the sources cited. Can you specifically identify the inconsistencies? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:55, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The one piece of clearly unreliable data (16,418, 0.007%, of the US popluation being of Scots-Irish background in 1980, versus much larger numbers before and after) is something worth removing, as confusing. So I did. We might want to investigate how that strange number was arrived at, but we'll need additional sources to do that. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Next, you've asked in mid-article "This seems to imply that only descent by the male line is relevant. If so, why?", about the text "the subgroups overlapping and not always distinguishable because of their shared ancestral surnames" from this passage:

Self-reported numbers are regarded by demographers as massive under-counts, because Scottish ancestry is known to be disproportionately under-reported among the majority of mixed ancestry, and because areas where people reported "American" ancestry were the places where, historically, Scottish and Scots-Irish Protestants settled in North America (that is: along the North American coast, Appalachia, and the Southeastern United States). The number of actual Americans of Scottish descent today is estimated to be 20 to 25 million (up to 8.3% of the total US population), and Scots-Irish, 27 to 30 million (up to 10% of the total US population), the subgroups overlapping and not always distinguishable because of their shared ancestral surnames.

What is possibly confusing about this? What sort of change would you make? It does not imply what you infer that it does. It's a simple fact that various Scottish and Scots-Irish/Ulster Scots (and plain Irish for that matter) surnames are the same, and this can make distinguishing between families a challenge, if there is no other information about them. It doesn't have any implications for the table data, which are census and other self-reports of ancestral ethnicity/nationality/whatever you want to call it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:23, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Next, your "that's not what the table says" fix-it post was easily resolved by simply reading the cited material and correcting the date (2008, not 2010), and updating the citation URLs in the process. Please do more of the actual fixing instead of drive-by tagging for someone else to fix. This took just a couple of minutes. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:44, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Need newer and more comparable figures[edit]

A lot of the figures for various countries in the infobox table appear to be numbers of direct Scottish immigrants, not the general Scottish-descent diaspora. E.g. for both New Zealand and South Africa, the numbers come out to a small fraction of 1% of the national population, but other estimates are that some 20% of New Zealanders claim Scottish descent. I haven't seen specific figures for South Africa yet, but it has to be higher than ~0.02%! Our article is coming across as rather confused. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:35, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]