The Name of the Picts
Stuart A McHardyIt has often been said that the origin of the name was due to the PIcts being tattooed. This however makes no sense as tattooing was common across the ancient world and many Roman legionnaires were themselves tattooed. Tattooing itself was already ancient even then as illustrated by the 5.000 year-old 'ice-mummy " known as Otzi, found in the Tyrolean Alps. From the time of Julius Caesar onwards there are references to natives of these islands painting themselves, though none of the Romans writing of the tribes north of Hadrian's Wall makes any such reference. The first references to tattooing are made by Isidore of Seville, writing in the 7 th century, who Wainwright accepted was not a totally reliable source. It may well have been that some, or even all of the tribal peoples of the British Isles when the Romans arrived painted their bodies, but the association with the Picts appears to rest on the understanding of the name meaning 'painted " , and not much else. There has long been a tendency in Western scholarship to see the world through a process of thinking that has effectively been defined by an adherence to the fundamental importance of Christian and Classical learning. This is understandable given how our education, and legal, systems have developed over the centuries, but it does create problems. The idea that civilization is defined by literacy and the urbanisation that both helps define, and accompanies the centralization of power in the modern nation state leads to an assumption of superiority on the part of societies who have gone through this process towards other peoples. The very terms savage and primitive are themselves an exemplar of this process and it is hard to deny that such attitudes are to varying degrees, racist. This gives rise to a perception that ideas emanating from such 'civilized' societies are inherently more accurate than anything that can come from more primitive peoples, even as in this case to the extent of ignoring evidence. As pointed out by Rivet and Smith (1979 p438) the earliest known term that can be associated with the Picts is 'Pexa " , It is possible that Ravenna's PEXA…. is for Pecti, or even more interestingly, Pectia, Pictland. The Cosmographer lists the name as that of an Antonine Wall fort, but we already know that this section contains several names that are nothing oi the sort, including two that are probably tribal names misread from a map as though they were forts (Volitario= Votadini, Credigone=Creones). Pexa could well come into this category. The authors suggest that the origin of the name occurring in the 7 th century Ravenna Cosmography (Ravenna) could have originated from a military map from the Severan campaigns of 208-211 CE, which itself was based on an earlier one (Rivet &Smith p193ff).
