Scott

Scott derives from a medieval English and Scottish surname meaning simply a Scot, that is, a person from Scotland or a speaker of Scottish Gaelic, ultimately tracing to the Late Latin Scottus, used by Roman writers to denote the Gaelic-speaking peoples of Ireland and northern Britain. The surname transferred into use as a given name during the nineteenth century, following the widespread fashion for adopting family names as forenames. Its popularity in the twentieth century was boosted in part by the fame of the American author and novelist Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, who bore it as a middle name, and later by various cultural figures. Closely related forms include the Scottish surname-derived Scot and the feminine adaptation Scottie.