Orkney, Scotland : Place names

Names from historical writing:

The following appear as names for Orkney. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name	Author	Source
ILES OF ORKNEY	William Camden	Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610).
ISLANDS ORCADES	William Camden	Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610).
ISLES OF ORKNES	William Camden	Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610).
ORACADES	William Camden	Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610).
ORCADES	William Camden	Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610).
ORKNEY	John Bartholomew	Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
ORKNEY	F.H. Groome	Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (Edinburgh: T.C. Jack, 1882-4).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.

Names for administrative units:

These names were used for units associated with Orkney. Click on the links for details of the units and their names:

Name	Unit Type	Source
00RA	District/Unitary Authority	Census of Population (2001 Key Statistics)
ORKNEY	Scottish Burgh/District (CLandward)	1951 Census of Scotland, Table 1, 'Comparison of population, density per 100 acres, and houses with 1931', for 'Burghs, Districts of Counties and CPs'.
	Scottish Burgh/District (Burgh)	1931 Census of Scotland, Table 16, 'Industries of Males and Females in Cities, Counties, and Large Burghs'.
	Scottish County	1951 Census of Scotland, Table 1, 'Comparison of population, density per 100 acres, and houses with 1931', for 'Burghs, Districts of Counties and CPs'.
	Scottish Poor Law Combination	Higginbotham, History of the Workhouse
ORKNEY AND SHETLAND	Constituency (PCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
	Constituency (CCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
	Constituency (CCon/PCon)	F.W.S. Craig (ed.), British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949 (Glasgow: Political Reference Publications, 1969)
	Scottish Burgh/District (CLandward)	The Scottish Archive Network, Scottish Archives Network Gazetteer
	Scottish County	1851 Census of Great Britain, Table [1], 'Population Abstract'.
ORKNEY AND ZETLAND	Constituency (CCon/PCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
ORKNEY ISLANDS	District/Unitary Authority	Census of Population (2001 Key Statistics)
ORKNEY ISLANDS	Nuts Unit Level 3	Office for National Statistics, Open Geography Portal (NUTS, level 3 (January 2018) Boundaries UK)
S14000051	Constituency (CCon)	House of Commons Library, Boundary review 2023: Which seats will change in the UK?
S14000051	Constituency (CCon)	House of Commons Library, Boundary review 2023: Which seats will change in the UK?
SHETLAND	Constituency (CCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
SHETLAND	Constituency (PCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
UKM65	Nuts Unit Level 3	Office for National Statistics, Open Geography Portal (NUTS, level 3 (January 2018) Boundaries UK)
ZETLAND	Constituency (CCon/PCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)

NB: These are all the names of all the administrative units which we have associated with Orkney, and you must judge whether all or even any of them are variant names for the place. They may well include the names of other locations or areas:

For cities, the associated administrative units will usually include parishes, especially ecclesiastical parishes, one of whose names is the name of the city followed by a saint's dedication, with just the saint's name as another variant. Parish names will sometimes also include "places" within towns.
Districts usually contain more than one settlement, and some districts had their names changed to take the name of a completely different settlement. As we link each administrative unit to just one of our "places", usually the last place the unit was named after, in these cases the name for a completely different place will appear on this page.
Similarly, a unit may sometimes be named after a particular settlement it contains and sometimes to indicate its location within a higher level unit. This was very common among British parliamentary constituencies in rural areas, one name referring to their main town and another indicating that they were in, say, the southern part of the relevant county.

Every name listed here is linked to the particular historical source in which it appears, but we cannot claim that these are all the historical names of Orkney, or that our references are to the first usage of the names. Similarly, we have tried to ensure that names included here are not transcription errors by ourselves, but it is possible they are the result of errors made when the historical sources were printed, or the result of visiting authors or census officials mis-hearing local names.