Somerled

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Medieval Gaelic chieftain of the Hebrides who drove out Norse rule and founded the line of the Lords of the Isles
2. A twelfth-century warrior leader from western Scotland who established a powerful kingdom over the islands and later Clan Donald
3. The Norse-Gaelic lord of Argyll and the Hebrides whose campaigns against Norway in the 1100s laid the foundations of the Lordship of the Isles

Etymology: Somerled is a proper noun, the name of a 12th-century Gaelic warlord who rose to power in the Hebrides and western Scotland. Its origin is Old Norse rather than Gaelic: the name is generally derived from "Sumarliði," combining "sumar" (summer) with "liðr" (a warrior, or a man of a band), so it has been read as something like "summer warrior." The name is a clear record of the Norse presence in the Hebrides, since a man with a Scandinavian name led the resistance against the Norwegian kings who claimed those islands. Somerled, who died in 1164, was of mixed Gaelic and Norse descent and used the title "King of the Isles." His descendants, the MacDougalls and the Clan Donald, carried his name through the centuries, and it survives in Gaelic as "Somhairle." The name's Norse root shows how thoroughly the Viking-age settlers had blended into the Gaelic world of the western seaboard by the time of his rise.