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"Ulster-Scots" is a term mainly used in Ireland and Britain ("Scotch-Irish" is commonly used in North America) to describe Scottish Presbyterians, descendants from mainly from the Scottish Lowlands, who migrated to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland), largely across the 17th century.
Considerable numbers later settled in the North American colonies through the 18th century. Disdaining the heavily English regions on the Atlantic coast because of past hostilities, the Ulster-Scots settlers crossed into the western mountains, where their descendants would populate the southern Appalachian regions and the Ohio Valley, before spreading west across the entire nation.
Today, over an estimated 20 million Americans can trace the roots of at least one family member to these settlers with at least one-third of the President of the United States having had ancestral links.
The term "Scotch-Irish" is a North American generic description used since settlement and still actively used there today to describe descendents of Scottish Presbyterians who first migrated to Ulster and later settled in North America through the 18th century. Other names, including Northern Irish and "Irish Presbyterians", were also used to describe these people.
It is believed that these already century-settled immigrants, now well established in American society, increasingly referred to themselves as "Scotch-Irish" in order to distinguish themselves as having Scottish origins against the later indigenous Irish arrivals of mainly Catholic origin who arrived in more substantial numbers in America after the Irish potato famineHistory of Ireland 1801-1922 The Irish Potato Famine also called The Great Famine or The Great Hunger ( Irish: An Gorta Mor , is the name given to a famine which struck Ireland between 1846 and 1849. The Famine was at least fifty years in the making, due of the 1840s.
Confusingly, "Scotch-Irish" does not stand for a genetic combination of Scottish and Irish and is therefore considered to be less accurately descriptive than "Ulster-Scots". Even though the term "Scotch-Irish" has been in use for several centuries in that context, it is uncommon in the United Kingdom, where people may not understand it.
The linguist R. J. Gregg also used the term "Scotch-Irish" to refer to the contact variety of the Scots languageScots (or Lallans meaning 'Lowlands'), properly Lowland Scots, is a Germanic language used in Lowland Scotland, as well as parts of Northern Ireland and border areas of the Republic of Ireland, where it is known in official circles as Ulster Scots or Ulla spoken in Ulster.
Furthermore, as people from Scotland nowadays insist on referring to themselves as only "Scots" or "Scottish", the old term of ScotchIn older times Scotch was an adjective meaning 'of Scotland'. Nowadays the preferred adjective is Scottish and Scotch usually means Scotch whisky. The remainder of this article is about the word. Scotch, Scottish or Scots? The adjective or noun Scotch is is assumed to be incorrect and thus mistakenly amended as Scots-IrishScots-Irish is the term for ethnicity which is a mix of Scots and Irish, or for a person or people of such ancestry. Scots-Irish" is frequently confused with the term " Scotch-Irish", also an ethnic term.. This should be avoided as "Scots-Irish" relates only to a standard genetic combination of today's Scottish and Irish people, and not to the specific group of Scottish Presbyterians descendents that settled in North America several centuries ago.