The Minch in the context of "Skye"

The Highlands (Scots: the Hielands; Scottish Gaelic: a' Ghàidhealtachd [ə ˈɣɛːəl̪ˠt̪ʰəxk], lit. 'the place of the Gaels') is a historical region of Scotland, comprising the Northernmost mountain ranges on the island of Great Britain, divided by the Great Glen between the Grampian Mountains to the southeast and the Northwest Highlands, divided from the islands of the Hebrides by the Minch. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east.

Originally home to the Caledonians/Picts, the region came to be the mainland stronghold of the Hebridean Gaels, whose Q-Celtic language succeeded that of their P-Celtic neighbours. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands.

The Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland is a marine area designated by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). It consists of a number of waterbodies between the Scottish mainland, the Outer Hebrides islands, and the coast of Ireland.

Waterbodies within the Inner Seas include the Minch and Little Minch, the Sound of Harris, the Inner Sound, the Sea of the Hebrides, the Firth of Lorn, the Sound of Jura, the Firth of Clyde, Belfast Lough and the North Channel. The IHO defines the limits of the Inner Seas as follows:

The Sea of the Hebrides (Scottish Gaelic: An Cuan Barrach, pronounced [ən̪ˠ ˈkʰuan ˈparˠəx]) is a small and partly sheltered section of the North Atlantic Ocean, indirectly off the southern part of the north-west coast of Scotland. To the east are the mainland of Scotland and the northern Inner Hebrides (including Skye and the Small Isles); to the west are the southern Outer Hebrides islands, principally South Uist, Eriskay, and Barra. To the north is the Little Minch, a channel connecting it with the Minch.

The Sea of the Hebrides forms part of the Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland, as defined by the International Hydrographic Organization, and part of the Seas west of Scotland as far as fisheries management is concerned.

Firth is a word in the English and Scots languages used to denote various coastal waters in the United Kingdom, predominantly within Scotland. In the Northern Isles, it more often refers to a smaller inlet. It is linguistically cognate to Scandinavian fjord and fjard (all from Proto-Germanic *ferþuz), with the original meaning of "sailable waterway". The word has a more constrained sense in English. Bodies of water named "firths" tend to be more common on the Scottish east coast, or in the southwest of the country, although the Firth of Clyde is an exception to this. The Highland coast contains numerous estuaries, straits, and inlets of a similar kind, but not called "firth" (e.g. the Minch and Loch Torridon); instead, these are often called sea lochs. Before about 1850, the spelling "Frith" was more common.

A firth is generally the result of ice age glaciation and is very often associated with a large river, where erosion caused by the tidal effects of incoming sea water passing upriver has widened the riverbed into an estuary. Demarcation can be rather vague. The Firth of Clyde is sometimes thought to include the estuary as far upriver as Dumbarton, but the Ordnance Survey map shows the change from river to firth occurring off Port Glasgow. In navigation terms, the dredged River Clyde Channel for shipping meets the Firth of Clyde Channel at the Tail of the Bank, where the river crosses a sandbar off Greenock as the estuary widens at the junction to the Gare Loch. Locally, the river can be described as extending even further west to Gourock point.