Ulster-Scots

The term specifically refers to Presbyterian Scots or their descendents who migrated from the Scottish Lowlands to Ulster (the northern province of Ireland). The migration of Scots to Ulster occurred largely across the 17th century (as detailed in the article History of Scotland).

Considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots migrated to the North American colonies throughout the 18th century (250,000 settled in the USA between 1717 and 1770 alone). Disdaining the heavily English regions on the Atlantic coast, most groups of Ulster-Scot settlers crossed into the "western mountains", where their descendants populated the southern Appalachian regions and the Ohio Valley. Others settled in northern New England and north-central Nova Scotia.

In the 2000 US Census, 4.3 million Americans (more than 2% of the white population in the USA) claimed Scots-Irish ancestry, although there are estimated to be upwards of 20 million Americans from across the USA who can trace the roots of at least one ancestor to Ulster. 14 of the 42 Presidents of the United States (1 in 3) have had ancestral links to Ulster, including three whose parents were born in Ulster. Several hundred thousand descendants of settlers from Ulster also live in Canada today.

The term Scotch-Irish

"Scotch-Irish" is a North American term that has been used since settlement to describe descendents of Scottish Presbyterians from the Scottish Lowlands who first migrated to Ulster and later settled in North America throughout the 18th century. Other names, including "Northern Irish" and "Irish Presbyterians", were also originally 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 that arrived in substantial numbers in America after the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. The term "Scotch" at that time in history was the favoured adjective as a designation - it literally means "...of Scotland".

As people from Scotland nowadays refer to themselves as "Scots" or "Scottish", the term "Scotch" has become dated. It may even be considered an ethnic slur as it nowadays refers only to whisky outside of an American context. Consequently, the term "Scots-Irish" has recently become more frequently used even in North America, as it is used in the name the popular American historical book "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America".

Confusingly perhaps for those outside of the US and Canada, the term "Scotch-Irish" or "Scots-Irish" does not refer either to simply Scottish or Irish or a combination of the two and is therefore considered by many to be less accurate a term than "Ulster-Scots/Scottish".

The linguist R. J. Gregg has also used the term "Scotch-Irish" to refer to the contact variety of the Scots language spoken in Ulster, what European linguists refer to as "Ulster Scots" or Ullans.

In literature