place names
The name of Ailsa Craig, an island in the Firth of Clyde, contains the Gaelic creag, meaning ‘rock’.
Some places with Gaelic names were given new names by English-speakers – Cill Rìmhinn (‘church of the king’s hill’) is now called St Andrew’s. However, whilst some names survive with their old spellings, many, as with surnames, have half-survived through Anglicization (such as Bowmore for Bogha Mòr, ‘great rock submerged in the sea’) or through direct translation, sometimes of only part of the name. Lochgilphead was Ceann Loch Gilb (where Ceann means ‘head’), for example. Known changes of parish names up to the 1790s are detailed in volume 20 of the First Statistical Account (see p. 32).
This becomes very relevant to genealogists when an ancestor gave a place of origin in a form that is no longer used. If a Gaelic place name is given, and you cannot find it, find out what it means and see if it now exists in an English translation.
Modern Ordnance Survey maps show many places in their Gaelic form, as authentically as possible. The commonest elements of place names are:
Achadh = field, such as Achiltibuie
Bad = place
Baile = township, such as Ballygrant
Caol = strait, such as Kylesku
Ceann – head, such as Kinloch
Cill = church or (monastic) cell, such as Kilbride
Creag = rock, such as Craiglarach
Druim = ridge, such as Drumpellier
Dùn = fort, such as Dunblane
Inbhir = mouth of river, such as Inverary
Na = of the
Rubha = promontory, such as Rhu
Srath = valley, such as Strathnaver
Taigh = house, such as Tighnabruaich
Badnaban meant ‘place of the women’; Cnocaneach ‘hill of the horses’ and Badnahachlais ‘place of the armpit’, presumably because it was in a narrow valley that does look rather like one.
Anglicization
As Scots and English replaced Gaelic, Gaelic surnames were Anglicized, leading to many changes in spelling, that often disguised true meanings. ‘Mac Gille’, meaning ‘son of the servant of…’ often became ‘McIl…’ or ‘Macel…’ There was also a tendency (on the part of registrars) to change difficult-to-spell Gaelic surnames into more familiar, existing surnames that sounded similar, which is how some MacEahcrans became Cochranes, and some O’Brolachans are now Brodies. Some surnames were subject to (almost) literal translations: some MacIntyres (‘son of the carpenter’) are now called Wright, for wrights crafted things.
Nicknames
Where a surname was very common, families might add an extra nickname or ‘tee name’. In her excellent Scottish Family Tree Detective (Manchester University Press, 2006), Rosemary Bigwood notes some north-east coast families being known by their surname followed by the name of their fishing boat, whilst in the Hebrides Bill Lawson noted extra surnames such as Kelper (kelp harvester), Clachair (mason) and Saighdear (soldier, usually used of an army pensioner). The MacLeod descendants of John MacLeod from Muck, who settled in Harris in 1779 as a gardener, are known locally as MacLeod na Gairneileirean, or just na Gairneileirean, ‘the Gardeners’.
Other nicknames were from characteristics, such as Dubh (black-haired) and Ruadh (redhaired). Red-haired Angus MacDougal might thus be known as Angus Ruadh Mac Dougal, or Angus Mac Dougal Ruadh. In the Lowlands, when the patronymic system died out nicknames could become people’s only surnames, such as Duff (from Duhb) or Cruikshanks (‘crooked legs’). Many people also became known by where they lived – Cairncross, Cairns, Cladcleuch and so on, some with interesting twists: the Caithness family aren’t from Caithness, but from Kettins in the barony of Angus.
The writer Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). His surname means literally ‘Scot’ and was borne by a great clan on the English-Scots borders.
Speaking Gaelic
The language of the Picts was a dialect of ancient British, akin to modern Welsh. Gaelic, another branch of the same tongue, developed in Ireland and was spoken by Irish settlers (the Scots) in Argyll and up the west coast, especially after the establishment of the Scots kingdom of Dalriada, about the second century AD. It gradually displaced ‘Pictish’ in the west and north. Its decline in the Lowlands was due mainly to the spread of Scots and English in the royal towns or burghs, and after the battle of Culloden in 1746 it began to vanish from the Highlands too. In the 1830s, the Second Statistical Account reports, for far-flung Assynt, Sutherland, that Gaelic was still spoken universally there, ‘…the only medium of religious instruction. The English language, however, is making slow but sure progress. The youth of the parish are ambitious of acquiring it, being sensible that the want of it proves a great bar to their advancement in life. It is likely, nonetheless, that Assynt is one of the very last districts in which the Gaelic language shall cease to be the language of the people.’
Ironically, the Gaelic School Society helped bring Gaelic to an end: once children had learned to read the scripture in Gaelic, the Account says, they wanted to read more on other subjects, and to do this they needed to learn English.
The Vikings’ tongue survives in many words and place names used in the areas they settled, and as a Scots/Norse hybrid, Norn, the native tongue of the Orkneys and Shetlands.
The Scots language – for language it is – is a descendant, along with Northumbrian English, of the tongue of the Anglians of Lothian. It gradually dominated the Lowlands and then pushed northwards, though borrowing words freely from Gaelic, French, Dutch, and English. It was the official tongue of Scotland until 1707. In 1773, Dr Johnson observed that:
‘…the conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English; their peculiarities wear fast away: their dialect is likely to become in half a century provincial and rustick, even to themselves. The great, the learned, the ambitious, and the vain, all cultivate the English phrase, and English pronunciation, and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard, except now and then from an old lady.’
By writing in Scots, Burns helped save the language from obscurity and helped restore some of its old dignity too. Later writers and poets, such as William Robertson Melvin in the nineteenth century and Hugh MacDairmid in the twentieth century, have contributed to a limited revival. See Scots-English English-Scots Dictionary (Lomond Books, 1998, repr. 2001), The Concise Scots Dictionary (Polygon at Edinburgh, 1999) and an online dictionary, www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl.
