means The mountainous or elevated regions of a country, especially the rugged upland areas of northern Scotland.

from A plain compound of "high" and "land," both rooted in Old English (heah and land) and stretching back to common Germanic ancestry. The word means exactly what it says — land that sits high — but capitalized as "the Highlands," it came to name Scotland's northern uplands specifically, set against the gentler "Lowlands" to the south.