Currently writing my honours dissertation on the Picts so I'll give this a go. Unfortunately we do not know what the Picts called themselves. The Picts have left very little textual evidence of themselves. The vast majority of what we know about the Picts has to be deduced from outside sources, principly the Annals of Ireland - the annals of Ulster and Tigernach in particular - and the writings of religious men such as the English Bede and the Gaelic Adomnan abbot of iona. What we do know of the Picts is that they must be seen as a separate people to the other native Britons. This is based on the way their contemporarys saw them as separate. In Bede's ecclesiastical history of the English he recognises Pictish as one of the 5 languages of the British Isles

• other 4 were: English (old English and its various dialects) , British (Brythonic and its dialects), Irish (old Irish or Gaelic) and Latin. What is left of the Pictish language has only sofar been attested to in place and Personal names. The place-name suffix "Pit" in places like Pitlochry are viewed as the Pictish equivalent of the Gaelic "bal" - as in Balloch, Balmoral - meaning township or steading. Much of the names are only attested to In their Gaelic form - Irish monks and other Gaelic speakers being the main writers of Pictish history. And for much of the later history of the picts Gaelic speaking monks probably made up the majority of the learned class in Pictland influencing and gaelisising the picts. Of the Pictish language we have only a few words and to this day not a single full sentence of Pictish has been discovered. Pictish was likely closely related to Brythonic showing similar patterns in names but is uninfluenced by the roman occupation. It may be that Pictish is a blend of an old Brythonic and an even more ancient language but that is meanly speculation on the part of historians. Some Historians think that there is some degree of mutual intelligence between Pictish and old Irish due to the supposed ease of which the Picts adopted Gaelic laws such as those of Adomnan - Gilbert Markus' new book Conceiving a nation goes into much detail about this.

But to examine what the Picts might have called themselves or where they got their names. The Picts as a people emerge in later Iron age in what is now Scotland from the tribes unconquered by the Romans. This may be why Brythonic and Pictish are viewed as different as I said earlier the Brythonic languages would have been influenced more by the roman and Anglo-Saxon occupations. A number of names appear in reference to the earlier tribes. The only one that sticks around until the 11th century is the Verturiones recorded by the Romans. This is Gaelised by the Irish annal writers into the name of the Northern Pictish Kingdom based around the Moray Firth called Fortriu - a fairly recent development in Scottish historiography which traditionally viewed Fortriu as being based in the South, see the writings of Alex Woolf for this. Woolf attempted to Pictishise this and he guessed that the Pictish version would look something like "Uerteru". This may be the closest we can get to any example of what some Picts may have referred to themselves as.

While Fortriu was the most important Pictish Kingdom we do have the Gaelic names for others the next most prevelant being Circinn (the area between the Tay and the Mearns in Angus), Fib which is Fife, and other areas such as Athfolta - which literally means little Ireland, which Markus points to as early evidence of the gaeliseastion of Pictland.

Overall the Irish tend to have two names for the Picts. Pictis/pictorum and Cruithne. The first is preferred by the annals writers and is based on the Latin Pictis. The second tends to be found in Garlic poetry. It can also refer to a people in Northern Ireland who are referred to by the same name. The Irish Picts are a bit of a historical annomoly and not an area I am that familiar with but it is very unlikely that they are related to the Picts most likely being a Gaelic people, although it's not impossible that some of the Picts could have crossed into Ireland in the earlier Iron age.

The English writers tend to depend on Latin when naming the Picts but the Britons may have their own names for them - I am unfortunately on the train on holiday so don't have access to my books but the British poem Y Goddodin may have accounts of Pictish names and the British name for them.

Overall much of Pictish history is still a mystery to modern Historians which is why it fascinates me soo much. The lack of Pictish voices in history is a frustration but he fragmented nature of the sources leaves a wonderful puzzle for historians to solve.

Sources:

Adomnan's Life of Columba

Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English

Alex Woolf From Pictland to Alba

His paper on the battle of Dun Nechtan and Fortriu whichs name I have forgotten

Gilbert Markus Conceiving a Nation

James Fraser From Caledonia to Pictland