Picts. The Picts were a confederation of Celtic language-speaking peoples who lived in what is today eastern and northern Scotland during the Late British Iron Age and Early Medieval periods. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from early medieval texts and Pictish stones. Their Latin name, Picti, appears in written records from Late Antiquity to the 10th century. They lived to the north of the rivers Forth and Clyde. Early medieval sources report the existence of a distinct Pictish language, which today is believed to have been an Insular Celtic language, closely related to the Brittonic spoken by the Britons who lived to the south. Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other Iron Age tribes that were mentioned by Roman historians or on the world map of Ptolemy. Pictland, also called Pictavia by some sources, achieved a large degree of political unity in the late 7th and early 8th centuries through the expanding kingdom of Fortriu, the Iron Age Verturiones. By 900, the resulting Pictish over-kingdom had merged with the Gaelic kingdom of Dal Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba; and by the 13th century Alba had expanded to include the formerly Brittonic kingdom of Strathclyde, Northumbrian Lothian, Galloway and the Western Isles. Pictish society was typical of many Iron Age societies in northern Europe, having wide connections and parallels with neighbouring groups. Archaeology gives some impression of the society of the Picts. While very little in the way of Pictish writing has survived, Pictish history since the late 6th century is known from a variety of sources, including Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, saints' lives such as that of Columba by Adomnan, and various Irish annals. The term Pict is thought to have originated as a generic exonym used by the Romans in relation to people living north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus. The Latin word Picti first occurs in a panegyric written by Eumenius in AD 297 and is taken to mean painted or tattooed people. Pict is Pettr in Old Norse, Peohta in Old English, Pecht in Scots and Peithwyr in Welsh. Some think these words suggest an original Pictish root, instead of a Latin coinage. In writings from Ireland, the name Cruthin, Cruthini, Cruthni, Cruithni or Cruithini was used to refer both to the Picts and to another group of people who lived alongside the Ulaid in eastern Ulster. It is generally accepted that this is derived from *Qritani, which is the Goidelic /Q-Celtic version of the Britonnic / P-Celtic *Pritani. From this came Britanni, the Roman name for those now called the Britons. What the Picts called themselves is unknown. It has been proposed that they called themselves Albidosi, a name found in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba during the reign of Mael Coluim mac Domnaill, but this idea has been disputed. A unified Pictish identity may have consolidated with the Verturian hegemony established following the Battle of Dun Nechtain in 685 AD. A Pictish confederation was formed in Late Antiquity from a number of tribes, how and why is not known. Some scholars have speculated that it was partly in response to the growth of the Roman Empire. The Pictish Chronicle, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the early histographers such as Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Holinshed, etc. all present the Picts as conquerors of Alba from Scythia. However, no credence is now given to that view. Pictland had previously been described by Roman writers and geographers as the home of the Caledonii. These Romans also used other names to refer to tribes living in that area, including Verturiones, Taexali and Venicones. But they may have heard these other names only second-or third-hand, from speakers of Brittonic or Gaulish languages, who may have used different names for the same group or groups. Pictish recorded history begins in the Early Middle Ages. At that time, the Gaels of Dal Riata controlled what is now Argyll, as part of a kingdom straddling the sea between Britain and Ireland. The Angles of Bernicia, which merged with Deira to form Northumbria, overwhelmed the adjacent British kingdoms, and for much of the 7th century Northumbria was the most powerful kingdom in Britain. The Picts were probably tributary to Northumbria until the reign of Bridei mac Beli, when, in 685, the Anglians suffered a defeat at the Battle of Dun Nechtain that halted their northward expansion. The Northumbrians continued to dominate southern Scotland for the remainder of the Pictish period.