Scotland divided into 32 subdivisions, known as local authorities, or councils. Glasgow City is the largest subdivision in Scotland in terms of population, with Highland being the largest in terms of area. Limited self-governing power, covering matters such as education, social services and roads and transportation, is devolved from the Scottish Government to each subdivision. "Scotland" comes from "Scoti", the Latin name for the Gaels. Philip Freeman has speculated on the likelihood of a group of raiders adopting a name from an Indo-European root, *"skot", citing the parallel in Greek "skotos" (σκότος), meaning "darkness, gloom". The Late Latin word "Scotia" ("land
Demography of Scotland It has been suggested that they would have had a mean population of about 2,000, but many would be much smaller than 1,000 and the largest, Edinburgh, probably had a population of over 10,000 by the end of the era. Calculations based on Hearth Tax returns for 1691 indicate a population of 1,234,575, but this figure may have been seriously affected by the famines of the 1690s. The first reliable information is a census conducted by the Reverend Alexander Webster in 1755, which shows the inhabitants of Scotland as 1,265,380. By the time of the first decadal census in 1801,