King Malcolm III ruled Scotland for some 35 years beginning in 1058. His Scottish subjects gave him the Gaelic nickname, “ceann mo’r,” or in English, “Canmore!” The nickname translates literally to ‘Big Head,’ also meaning ‘Great Leader.’ (Thereby providing The Malcolm Hotel its mandate).

But perhaps we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves…

History from the 10 hundreds provides a few ‘roughly’ related versions. One arguable yet enduring version has Malcolm as a nine-year-old boy and heir to the throne being spirited out of Scotland by friends of the royal family after one ‘Macbeth’ murdered his father, King Duncan I. (An act, of course, that centuries later inspired part of a play by William Shakespeare).

Macbeth ruled Scotland for the next eleven years. During that time, in exile, Malcolm the boy grew into Malcolm the man. Malcolm the man, with his assembled army, marched back to Scotland and ‘terminated’ Macbeth’s reign, thereby reclaiming the family’s royal place in Scottish history for almost the next 200 years! Malcolm the man had grown into Malcolm the King.