Beyond what has been stated, some ancient names in our present-day speech witness to the to the differences between Gaidhealic and Pictish; and show the Brittonic (Old British) character of the latter tongue. For example, the name of S. Maelrubha of Abercrossan, a Pict, means Red Cleric. In the districts of Pictland where he laboured the tradi tional pronunciation of his name, still used, is ‘Malruf,’ ‘Maruf” or ‘Marüve.’ The b in his name is clearly aspirated. Among the descendants of the Gaidhealic Colonists in the West, however, his name is spelt Maolruadha. It has the same meaning; and in colloquial Gaelic has frequently been translated Sagart Ruadh, ‘Red Priest.’ The Gaidhealic form is seen in the west country names, ‘Kil-Molruy,’ ‘Kil-Marow,’ and ‘Kil-Maree.’ The important point is that the name gives us the Pictish rubh and the Gaidhealic ruadh, both meaning red.

Again the Landnamabók of Iceland informs us of certain place-names “Papeya” and “Papyli” The places so designated were occupied by Clerics called ‘Pápas’ before the Scandinavians went to Iceland. Dicuil, the Irish geographer, knew of these Clerics being in Iceland about A.D. 725. But the names are in everyday use among ourselves designating Papa Stour in Shetland, Papa Westra in Orkney, Pab-Ei in the outer Hebrides; and other places. ‘Pápa’ came into the childspeech of Greece with Phrygian nurses, took the form papas and needless to state meant father,’ or later, ‘grandfather.’ The Greek-speaking Christians applied the name to ministers of the Church, regarded as ‘fathers’ of their congregations. It came into Gaul on the lips of various bodies of Christian, Greek-speaking exiles, not to mention traders and professional men.

Having been already applied to monks in Greek-speaking districts, the name was naturally transferred to S.Martin and other presidents of Celtic monastic communities who were imitating the Greek-speaking monks. The president of the monastic community generally spoke ofthe members as his ‘children’ or ‘family,’ or to use the Celtic word,  his ‘muinntir” a name which still survives at S.Martin’s establishment at Tours, in ‘Marmoutier’ or Mormuinntir, that is ‘Magnum Monasterium” or Great Monastery. Kaor, Papa of Hermopolis, is the writer of a letter preserved in Papyrus 417, British Museum, dated c. A.D.350.

“Papa” found its way to the daughter ‘Magnum Monasterium’ in Galloway with S. Martin’s disciples, Ninian the Briton and his followers. It is a word that no Gaidheal ever popularized; because no Gaidheal could easily pronounce it. In fact the Gaidheals rejected it, and adopted the Syriac “Ab” the title of the presiding monk in certain communities of the East. On the other hand, ‘Papa with its p-sounds is such a word as Britons and Picts would welcome. It occurs in early documents, in the Epistle wrongly attributed to Cumine of Hy, and is applied to S. Patrick, a Briton. The survival of the name in Iceland goes to confirm Joceline’s statement that S. Kentigern sent his missionaries ‘towards Iceland.’ The use of the word at all by the Picts and Britons reveals to any one who knows the early history of the Church in Gaul that their missionaries had been in touch with S. Martin’s monasticism and its nomenclature among the Celts of Gaul while the Roman Church was still looking askance at monasticism, and while the Bishop of Rome had little influence among the Gallic bishops.

Although monasticism and its nomenclature were brought to Gaul from Greek-speaking centres the name Papa disappeared and Ab or Abbas took its place there and elsewhere in the West as soon as the Bishop of Rome won control; because with clever humility he had chosen Papa as his own particular title, rejecting Patriarchês or other names equally grand. Papa survived only in places where it had been firmly rooted in the speech of the people before the influence of Rome overtook it, as on the coasts of Pictland; or throughout the Eastern Church where the influence of Rome was never felt, and where it still designates the humbler clergy.

Other borrowed words seen in the place-names of the Picts are:

Cill (English Kil-),dative of Ceall (Early Irish Cell), from Latin Cella, a cell. The name now means Church. Originally it was attached to the founder’s name. The cell of the Ab was the centreof the monastic settlement, and close by stood the Church of the community. The great Pictish monastery of Bangor was a town of detached cells within a guarded rampart. The missionaries from Bangor and other centres of the Irish Picts introduced the detached bee-hive cell into Pictland, just as S. Columba, the Gaidheal, introduced it into Dalriada according to the examples which all had seen at Clonard and Glasnevin. It is worth noting, in this connection, that S. Columba’s teacher at Clonard was educated among the Britons, and that his teacher at Glasnevin was an Irish Pict. ‘Cill was not applied originally to Churches founded by missionaries from the Britons; Llan was common. Among the Picts and Gaidheals the Church frequently grew out of the Cell; among the Britons the Church and Cell were contemporaneous. S. Ninian’s Cell was Casa, a hut; because it was an effort to keep true to the type of Bothy at which S. Martin introduced and began to organize monasticism in Gaul, on the farm which S. Hilary gave to him for his great experiment. Here S.Martin began in the ‘ Logo-Tigiac’  or White Hut (The place is now Liguge, Poitiers), which was the original of Candida Casa.

Gregory of Tours and Fortunatus preserve the name as ‘Loco-ciacum ‘ and ‘ Logotegiacum’ and ‘ Logotigiacum. ‘ Longnon gives ‘ ‘ Loco-diacus”  of which there is a variant ‘ Lucoteiac- The latter part of the name is clearly  the diminutive of the Celtic Tigh ( Teach) or Ty, a House. The root of the first part of the name is seen in the Greek prefix leuko- which means Brightwhite; and in the ancient Celtic prefix Leuce (Leucetios, God of Lightning). The Celtic root also survives in the personal name ‘Luag-‘ which Angus the Culdee paraphrases as ‘clear and brilliant ‘ ; or in ‘ Cat-luan, ‘ Light of Battle.
It is seen also in the current Gaelic word luachair (rush), the light-maker. The whole name means literally Bright-white Hut, and is correctly translated by ‘ Candida Casa. ‘ Compare with the last part of the name ‘Moguntiacum,’ House of the god Mogun, the ancient name of Mainz. Kentigern’s settlement, showing that in his time the ‘little houses’ were maintained. In an old Irish manuscript, ‘ Botha is the name applied to the cells at Glasnevin. Both- was also used in Pictland of Alba.

Eaglais, formerly eclais (Brit, eglwys], is the Greek ekklesia, Assembly or Church. It occurs throughout Pictland, and, when associated with the Ancient Church-foundations, is attached to the ecclesiastical founder’s name. It is seen in such names as Eccles-Machan, West Lothian; in ‘ Egglis,’ the short name recorded in the early twelfth century for the ancient Eccles-Ninian, now S. Ninian’s near Stirling; in Eccles-Grig,Kincardineshire; and in Egilshay, Church-island, Orkney.

Tempul (Brit, tempel] is a name that abounds in Pictland; and, indeed, wherever Celts were settled. It came to mean Church. In the preface to the Hymn of Mugent, who was one of S. Ninian’s successors and presided at Candida Casa at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth, the scholiast calls the Church at Candida Casa ‘templum.’ The Church-site which S. Ninian on his northern mission marked off at Glen Urquhart,and where his Church stood for centuries, is still called “Tempul” Notwithstanding the later use of ‘ Tempul ‘ and its application to the Church at Candida Casa, there is evidence that in Pictland the name was not restricted to buildings but sometimes was used in its original sense of a place marked off and enclosed for a sacred purpose. The name had been, apparently, first applied in Pictland to the sacred enclosures of the heathen Picts; and, afterwards, bestowed upon the Christian Churches erected there. When Ailred, doubtless following the Old Life, relates concerning S. Ninian’s northern mission ‘temples are cast down and Churches erected,’ he means no more than that the templum proper, the inclosed space,  was broken into by the Christian pioneer, and the ceremonial standing stones laid flat.

Seipeal (Ir. Sepel), Chapel, is an interesting name. It has been applied in Pictland, in the vernacular, to the most ancient Church-sites, foundations not dedications, where there has been nothing but dry-built stone foundations time out of mind, and  perhaps adisused Churchyard. Thus we have in the north of Scotland, where ancient names have been little displaced, such examples as Sepel- Ninian, Sepel-Finbar, Sepel-Drostan,Sepel-Donnan, and the like. Yet the philologists declare that Sepel, because of the initial S which is articulated as Sh, was imported from English after the tenth century when extra apses with an altar came to be added to the main structures and were called ‘Chapels.’ The Gaidheals, for example, had no need to borrow from English; because they took their word Caibeal, Chapel, direct from the Latin Capella and it is seen in such a name as Portincaple, Port of the Chapel, reproduced in the fourteenth century as ‘Portkebbil’ Manifestly the initial Sh- sound in Sepel was due, not to English, but to the influence of a tongue which disliked simple initial S as much as initial C.

Both the Britons and Picts had these dislikes,hence in Pictland there still survives in the native pronunciation of place-names sepel for capella ‘shantor for cantor, a choirmaster; ‘shant ‘ for sanct, and even ‘Skanonry’ for Canonry, the place where Canons resided. There is a further indication that “sepel” a chapel, was used by the Celts long before its application in the tenth century to extra apses The name goes back to the period of the true capella, that is, little capa or covering. The true ‘chaplain’ was the minister who dispensed the sacraments under the capella, which was an extemporized canopy of thatch-work raised over the held Communion-table of a minister accompany-
ing the Christian legions of the Emperor, or of a pioneer missionary sealing his converts.

As Ailred, with the Old Life before him, states that S.Ninian in his northern mission through Pictland joined his converts ‘to the body of Believers, by faith, by confession, and by the Sacraments, ‘ the Capella would be a feature of his field-services ; and it is only natural that the dry-stone building with heather-thatched roof which succeeded it as a permanent shelter for the Holy Table, should continue to possess the name Sepel, Capella, or Chapel. In the early Celtic Church ‘Capella’ ‘and ‘Casula’ became interchangeable names, apparently because of the thatch-work covering common to both;  for, of course, while the Casula had walls, the early Capella was supported on poles.