place name

   James Boswell, in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, says:

   There is a beautiful little island in the Loch of Dunvegan, called Isa. M’Leod said, he would give it to Dr Johnson…M’Leod encouraged the fancy of Dr Johnson’s becoming owner of an island; told him, that it was the practice in this country to name every man by his lands; and begged leave to drink to him in that mode: ‘Island Isa, your health!’ Sir Walter Scott also comments on this custom in Waverley.

   The Lowlanders call him, like other gentlemen, by the name of his estate, Glennaquoich; and the Highlanders call him Vich Ian Vohr, that is, the son of John the Great; and we upon the braes here call him by both names indifferently.

   This explanation is given to an ignorant Englishman. Another such needs to be put right in The East Wind of Love, by Compton Mackenzie: ‘Don’t call me Mr Macleod, young man. I’m not my own factor.’ John could not believe that he was meant to address this genially fierce old gentleman as ‘Macleod’ and went back to the ‘sir’ he had been using. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he was told. You should call me Ardvore.’ The speaker here is laird of Ardvore. See also the quotation from Boswell at Muck.

   Telephone operators dealing with international calls sometimes address callers by the town from which they are calling: ‘Go ahead, London.’