Mormaer

In early medieval Scotland, a mormaer was the Gaelic name for a regional or provincial ruler, theoretically second only to the King of Scots, and the senior of a Toísech (chieftain).

[2] The word earl was increasingly used in place of mormaer as Scots replaced Gaelic as the dominant vernacular language between the late 12th and late 13th centuries,[3] and the word Earl was exclusively used within Scotland to translate comes in the later Middle Ages as Scots became the language of record.

[6] Domnall mac Eimín is described as Mormaer of Mar in the Annals of Ulster recording his death at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

[14] The Leges inter Brettos et Scottos – a law code reflecting customs in the Kingdom of Alba in the 10th or 11th centuries – lists socio-legal ranks within society and their cro, the payments due in kine to the kin of a victim of that rank in the event of a killing.

[16] Despite being the leading power within their province, the mormaer did not necessarily hold a large proportion of the land within the province in their own right: land was also held by the King, was granted out by the King to secular vassals, or was held by large religious foundations or other powerful lords.

[19] The role of the mormaer changed dramatically over the course of the late 12th century, and by the early 13th century the position had evolved into one that was inherited, normally through the male line, and whose power was largely limited to a territorial "earldom", managed and exploited in a manner similar to that of other lords, and not coterminous with the province of the same name.

[22] The rise of patrilinear inheritance meant that succession to mormaership became linear and stable; a mormaer's estates, previously split between those he controlled as head of a kindred and those controlled in his capacity as mormaer, came to be viewed as a single entity; and land rather than kinship became the main determinant of secular power.

This is why other lordships, many of them more powerful, such as those of lords of Galloway, Argyll and Innse Gall, are not, and were not, called mormaerdoms or earldoms.