 One possible derivation comes from "skitis", an early Celtic word for "winged", which may describe how the island's peninsulas radiate out from a mountainous centre.Subsequent Gaelic-, Norse- and English-speaking peoples have influenced the history of Skye; the relationships between their names for the island are not straightforward.Various etymologies have been proposed, such as the "winged isle" or "the notched isle" but no definitive solution has been found to date; the place name may be from an earlier, non-Gaelic language.