In the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, the use of the Gaelic language

Scottish Gaelic language

Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish....

 on road signs

Traffic sign

Traffic signs or road signs are signs erected at the side of roads to provide information to road users. With traffic volumes increasing over the last eight decades, many countries have adopted pictorial signs or otherwise simplified and standardized their signs to facilitate international travel...

 instead of, or more often alongside, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 is now common, but has historically been a controversial issue of symbolic rather than practical significance for people on both sides of the debate.

History

In the 18th and 19th centuries, map makers recorded Gaelic placenames in Anglicised versions. One would expect important towns like Stornoway

Stornoway

Stornoway is a burgh on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.The town's population is around 9,000, making it the largest settlement in the Western Isles and the third largest town in the Scottish Highlands after Inverness and Fort William...

 or Portree

Portree

Portree is the largest town on Skye in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It is the location for the only secondary school on the Island, Portree High school. Public transport services are limited to buses....

 to have slightly different names in different languages, but it is unusual for this to be the case with small hamlets or minor topographical features, and the Anglicisation of placenames was resented by educated Gaels.

In the 20th century, Inverness County Council, which until the latter part of the century was known for its antipathy towards the Gaelic language, was responsible for erecting road signs throughout the Highlands. The council insisted that these be entirely in English and follow the spellings on the Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...

 maps, despite moves in Wales for bilingual sign

Bilingual sign

A bilingual sign is the representation on a panel of texts in more than one language...

s by special authorisation from 1965, with the Bowen Committee recommending their nationwide provision in 1972. Gaelic language organisations had limited resources and thus did not see opposition to this policy as a priority.

In 1973, however, the issue was forced onto the public agenda as a result of the Skye

Skye

Skye or the Isle of Skye is the largest and most northerly island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate out from a mountainous centre dominated by the Cuillin hills...

 road sign controversy. The council was planning to build a new road south from Portree

Portree

Portree is the largest town on Skye in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It is the location for the only secondary school on the Island, Portree High school. Public transport services are limited to buses....

, and needed to purchase a strip of land belonging to landowner Iain Noble

Iain Noble

Sir Iain Andrew Noble, 3rd Baronet of Ardkinglas and Eilean Iarmain was a businessman, landowner in the Isle of Skye and a noted Scottish Gaelic language activist. He died at home in Skye on 25 December 2010....

. Noble offered to donate the land to the council on condition that the three signs which were to be erected on the stretch of road be bilingual. The proposal was fiercely resisted by the council, and in particular by Lord Burton, Chairman of the Roads Committee, who later the same year attempted unsuccessfully to introduce legislation in the House of Lords

House of Lords

The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....

 limiting the use of Gaelic by Scottish local authorities. However, Noble was supported by a petition signed by many prominent Skye residents, and the experience of Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, where bilingual signposting had already been accepted, was favourable. As the issue had aroused public interest, and a compulsory purchase order

Compulsory purchase order

A compulsory purchase order is a legal function in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland that allows certain bodies which need to obtain land or property to do so without the consent of the owner. It may be enforced if a proposed development is considered one for public betterment - for...

 might have been slow and expensive, the council negotiated a compromise: Portree and Broadford

Broadford, Skye

Broadford , together with nearby Harrapool, is the second-largest settlement on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, lying on the SW corner of Broadford Bay, on the A87 between Portree and the Skye Bridge....

 both received bilingual signposts on an "experimental" basis.

As Noble had hoped, and the council feared, this set a precedent, which was gradually followed throughout the 1980s, becoming generally accepted in the 1990s. Bilingual signposting is now the norm throughout the Western Isles and also in large parts of the mainland on local authority roads.

Current day

In 2001, the Scottish government announced plans to erect bilingual signage along many of the trunk roads in the Scottish Highlands, in addition to those already erected on local-authority-maintained roads. This project is now all but completed, although importantly it excludes the main A9

A9 road

The A9 is a major road running from the Falkirk council area in central Scotland to Thurso in the far north, via Stirling, Bridge of Allan, Perth and Inverness. At 273 miles , it is the longest road in Scotland and the fifth-longest A-road in the United Kingdom...

 trunk road and also the A96 between Inverness

Inverness

Inverness is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for the Highland council area, and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands of Scotland...

 and Aberdeen

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....

. It has however included the A82

A82 road

The A82 is a trunk road in Scotland. It is the principal route from Lowland Scotland to the western Scottish Highlands, running from Glasgow to Inverness, going by Loch Lomond, Glen Coe and Fort William. It is the second longest primary A-road in Scotland after the A9, which is the other...

 westerly trunk route from Inverness to Glasgow. Pressure is now being placed on the Scottish Government to extend the coverage of bilingual signs to other trunk roads in the Highlands.

Source

• Hutchinson, Roger (2005). A Waxing Moon: The Modern Gaelic Revival. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing
  Mainstream Publishing
  Mainstream Publishing is a publishing company in Edinburgh, Scotland, founded in 1978. It is associated with the Random House Group, who bought Mainstream in 2005....
  
  . ISBN 1-84018-794-8.