The Boys' Brigade Mountaineering Club

Skiddaw is the 6th highest peak in England and dominates the skyline to the north of the town of Keswick, from where there is an easy ascent via a tourist track. The mountain is a long undulating ridge aligned roughly north-south with steep drops east and west. Its surface is mainly grassy, but the summit is littered with small slaty stones. Along the ridge, to the south of the main peak, is another Hewitt, called Little Man. The main summit is sometimes known as High Man or Skiddaw Man. The latter appears on Ordnance Survey maps as the name of the summit.

See its entries on Walkhighlands or Wikipedia or view it from above on Google Earth.

The earliest references to Skiddaw, in the 13th century, spelt it as Skythou and Skydehow. The name could be derived from Old Norse words Skyti meaning Archer or Skut meaning Jutting Crag and Haugr meaning Hill (but commonly corrupted to How or Howe in English mountain names). An alternative is that Skidd might have been a personal name or come from Skítr (Old Norse), meaning Dung or Excrement. The most likely of these meanings is Hill with a Jutting Crag.

Another theory is that the name could have Cumbric origin. It could be a corruption of the equivalent of the Welsh words Ysgwydd, meaning Shoulder, and Ddu (with the D soft-mutated to Dd after a singular feminine noun), meaning Black, which could be descriptive of the mountain. A more plausible theory might be that it came from the plural of this word, Ysgwyddau, which would also be descriptive and would be closer to the local pronunciation of Skidda. So, Skiddaw could also mean Black Shoulder or Shoulders.

Man, as in Skiddaw Man, might come from Mœna (Old Norse) meaning something which comes to a point or projects out (i.e. a Peak) or from the Cumbric equivalent of Maen (Welsh), meaning Stone or Mann (Old English) simply meaning Man.