Pour a wee dram, heat up the haggis and discover how many Alberta places have Scottish roots

Calgary got its name from a castle on the Isle of Mull, but it's far from the only place in southern Alberta to get its name from Scottish roots.

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To start, there's also Banff, Canmore, Strathmore andAirdrie.

And that's just the tip of a very Scottish iceberg.

According to Visit Scotland, the Scottish tourism board,other Alberta places named after Scottish ones or peopleinclude (but are not limited to):

• Alness.
• Alyth.
• Ardmore.
• Ardrossan.
• Bankhead(ghost town).
• Barrhead.
• Blairmore.
• Bon Accord (the motto of Aberdeen).
• BonnieDoon.
• Bonnie Lake.
• Broxburn.
• ButedaleFalls.
• Caldwell (ghost town).
• Carstairs.
• Chisholm.
• Clyde.
• Colinton.
• Coutts.
• Craigmillar.
• Craigmyle.
• Cromdale.
• Dalmuir.
• Dunmore.
• Dunvegan.
• Eaglesham.
• Erskine.
• Ferintosh.
• FortMacleod.
• FortMcMurray.
• Gartly.
• Halkirk.
• Hazeldean.
• Holyrood.
• Innisfail.
• Inverness River.
• Irvine.
• Islay.
• Kilsyth.
• Kirriemuir.
• Lenzie.
• Lomond(LochLomond).
• Mackenzie County.
• Mallaig.
• Mintlaw(ghost town).
• Mount Hector (after James Hector).
• Mount Lady Macdonald (after John A's wife).
• New Stirling.
• Pitlochrie.
• Scotfield.
• Stirling.
• Strathcona.
• StrathconaCounty.

"Part of it is the reflection of a [certain] desire of a city and this is true of all these places," said Calgary-based Aritha van Herk, an academic and author of Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta and other books.

"When it was just a railway stop, the people who came there wanted them to mean more than that, andso they would name them in the hopes it would become a big city."

Renaming

VanHerksays naming things or renaming them from the Indigenous names that pre-dated themreflects a kind of mindset that characterized the time.

"It seems both a mixture of names that were put onto places were recognition of someone, one of the settlers clearly, the Indigenous names were completely erased or it was some weird nostalgiafor the places that they left," vanHerksaid.

"Here they werein what they read as the middle of nowhere and they desperately tried to comfort themselves, by dragging a place from their history to here."

It was almost as if by naming a place, they imagined they could exert a degreeof control, she said.

"The desire to name, I think, is an act of possession:if I name it, I have it I own it," vanHerksaid.

"That's an old colonial impulse."

Here's the story behind the names of a few of the more prominent southern Alberta places named after Scottish ones.

Banff

Banff is a Scottish town located inAberdeenshire. It's located on Banff Bay, and faces the town ofMacduff, across the RiverDeveron.

Oddly enough, there is a Banff Springs Hotel in Scotland that looks a little like a ranch house motor hotel that you'd find driving across theTrans-Canada Highway,while in Alberta, there is amagisterialBanff Springs Hotel that looks like something a Scottish king might call home.

Canmore

Canmore was officially named in 1884 by Canadian Pacific Railway director Donald A. Smith.

It was named after Malcolm III,whose nickname was "Canmore" Gaelic for "Big Head."

He was probably best-known for killing don't say the name! Macbeth in 1058 and Macbeth's little-known son, Lulach, in quick succession, setting up a 200-year run for his clan to rule Scotland.

Airdrie

Airdrie, which means "The King'sHeight,"was named after a village nearGlasgow. It was named by engineer WilliamMcKenziein 1889, probably because its elevation makes it one of the highest citiesin Canada.

The ScottishAirdrieis located about 19 kilometres east ofGlasgow, in NorthLanarkshire. In 2012, it had a population of around 37, 000 people.

The town name evolved, too, fromArdre(1373)toArdry(1546)toArdrie(1587). By 1630, it had morphed intoAirdrieand has stayed that way ever since.

Strathmore

Some say Strathmore wasnamed after a title bestowed upon Claude Bowes-Lyon, a.k.a., the Earl ofStrathmore(whose granddaughter was Queen Elizabeth II).

Others claim the name stemmed from a geological phenomenon back in the old country a large valley or "strath" runningbetween the Grampian mountains and theSidlawssomewhere in the Scottish highlands.

According to the Town of Strathmore's own website, the Canadian Pacific Railway named the hamlets that sprung up as it laid rail across the country.

"Although it is not recorded who named the original site 'Strathmore,' it is known that a Scot named James Ross was in charge of the project and he was inclined to giving Scottish names to the sidings," the town's website says.

The earliest mention of Strathmore inScotlanddates back to when the Romans established several marching camps in the area to support their invasion and planned northward expansion.

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