The ancient name of Scot or Scott is a Gaelic word which was used in Scotland and Ireland, and meant rover or wanderer. This was probably because the early settlers were sea-rovers from the Iberian penisula, even before the time of Christ. In Scotland, for which the name of the country was taken, the Gaelic word referred to a Gael, or one of the Gaelic-speaking Celtic people that came there from Northern Ireland about the 5th Century A.D. They settled on the west coast of what the Romans called New Caledonia, and then went further inland. They joined the native Picts and other earlier groups of settlers which had arrived there from the European continent. There is an ancient legend about the origin of the name Scot which goes back to the time of Moses and the Exodus. One historian claims that the name originated with Scota, daughter of the Pharoah who set the Israelites free, then pursued them through Red Sea The King of Athens had a son named Gathelus who was causing him problems, so the King sent his son to Egypt to marry Scota, the Pharoah's daughter. When the 10 plagues from God were used against Egypt through Moses, Gathelus took his new bride along with many other Greeks and Egyptians and fled Egypt by sea, finally landing in what is now Scotland, which was named in honor of Scota..
The actual name of Scotland was first used about the 12th Century A.D. The earliest known use of the name Scott is for Uchtred filius Scott, a witness to the foundation Charter of Selkirk, in the year 1120 A.D. He was a courtier of the Scottish King David I, and his name of Uchtred was a well known English name of the time. He lived in the Lowlands near the English/Scottish border. He had two grandsons, Richard who was the ancestor of the Scotts of Buccleuch and Michael, ancestor of the Scotts of Balweary. When Edward I was King of England, the Scott family home was at Great Barr in the county of Stafford. In 1296 a certain Scott family member was arrested as a prisoner in London and he and his family were not allowed to go north of the river Trent, under threat of beheading. He relocated near the river Trent by the thick forest of Cannock (Burke's Peerage). Later, Scott's Hall was in the parish of Snead, near Ashford, in Kent. It became the longtime residence of John Baliol, King of Scotland. The land was sold in 1784 to John Honeywood and later became the property of Sir Edward Knatchbull, who tore down the house, which was from the time of Henry VIII.
A famous Scott was Sir Walter Scott who wrote Ivanhoe. Scott is a fairly common name and there have been many famous Scottaws throughout history. In 1660, Thomas Scott, Secretary of State for the Parliament of Cromwell ,in 1649, was beheaded by order of King Charles II, for having signed the order of execution for King Charles I. A great miscarriage of justice occured in the U.S. in 1849, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that slaves were property in the famous Dred Scott case. George C. Scott was an academy award winning actor, and other actors and actresses were Randolph Scott, Zacharary Scott and Liz Scott.