Zetland
(local/other name)

(most common name):
• Shetland
(transboundary/brand name):
• Shetland

The Zetland once had the nickname ‘clouty cow’.

The word ‘clout’ is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a piece of cloth, leather, metal, etc., that is used to patch something. If something is ‘clouty’ it is ‘patched’.

So a ‘pied’ or ‘particolored’ coat on a bovine has the appearance of different colors being ‘patched’ together.

The Shetland Islands (today called simply Shetland and formerly called Zetland) are a subarctic archipelago belonging to Scotland and can be found northeast of Great Britain about 170 km from the mainland situated between the Faroe Islands and Norway.

This page was last updated on: 2023-05-21

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