identify them in terms of place and family than the names of, say, English or French people.
A theatrical poster of a romantic melodrama, Bonnie Scotland, performed about 1895, shows the idealized image of Scots people that was common around the world.
Variant spellings
In Scots and Gaelic, various groups of letters are interchangeable, or pronounced in non-intuitive ways. In Scots, ‘1’ following ‘a’, ‘o’ or ‘u’ is vocalized as ‘w’, so Falkirk can be rendered Fawkirk and Goldie as Goudie. ‘F’ or ‘v’ at the end of a name might be dropped, so sheriff might be rendered ‘shirra’, whilst ‘d’ was often added, so Norman might become Normand. Gaelic has its own rules of pronunciation and declension. If your family is from a Gaelic-speaking area, it is worth studying the basics, using George McLennan’s Scots Gaelic: an introduction to the basics (Argyll Publishing, 1998) – the added bonus being you will then be able to speak a few words of your own ancestral tongue.
First names
When Gaelic first names were recorded in official documents such as OPRs, attempts were often made to Anglicize them. Being familiar with Homer’s Iliad, session clerks sometimes substituted Gaelic or Norse names with similar-sounding Homeric ones, hence many boys called Aonghas in Gaelic were recorded as Aeneas, and those with the Norse name Ivor became Evander.
Sometimes, several Gaelic names had only one English ‘equivalent’, such as John. Bill Lawson found a Hebridean family with sons called Iain, Shauny, Eoin and Iagan: the registrar recorded all four as John!
There were also names that were commonly substituted not because they were actually linked etymologically but simply because they were vaguely similar. This, as with the spellings, was at the whim of the recording clerk: your ancestors seldom had any say in the matter. Some common variants are as follows, but someone recorded with one variant may easily appear elsewhere under another.
These are generalizations. Local custom was often random, though more eccentric. Bill Lawson’s studies of the Hebrides show that Bethag was Anglicized to Rebecca in Harris, and to Betty or Betsy in Lewis, except for the Lewis parish of Lochs, where the registrar translated Bethag as Sophie. He knows, therefore, that a migrant family from Lewis who used the name Sophie was probably from Lochs.
Girls’ names were often created using their fathers’. Some names, like Nicholas and Christian, were given to girls unaltered: others had ‘-ina’ added. William’s daughter might be Wilhelmina (the GROS website noted the spelling ‘William All-Mina’ in Morton in 1769). Alexander’s daughter became Alexandrina. A real Alexandrina I know of called herself Alice instead, whilst some girls just ended up being nicknamed ‘Ina’. Pity poor Johnina Samuelina, who was named after both her grandfathers!
Grandfather, father and son sharing the same name: three generations of William Meikles, pictured in Falkirk in 1949. The child in the picture grew up to have two sons, the oldest also called William (courtesy of John Meikle).
James and Eleanor Ritchie (born Morgan) from the fishing community of Musselburgh, East Lothian. Her grandson, Eleanor Brown, was named after her! The eleventh son, Eleanor’s parents are said to have run out of boys’ names by the time he came along.
Middle names
Scots rarely used these before the nineteenth century. When the custom spread, Scots sometimes used the names of wealthy patrons or benefactors as middle names, but more normally used existing family forenames and surnames, thereby helping identify the wider ramifications of the family tree. Walter Hooks (1847-1915), pattern-maker of Ardrossan, Ayrshire (see pp. 50-1), for example, called one daughter Mary MacClandish Hooks, the middle name being her mother’s maiden name, and another Sarah Boag Hooks, Sarah Boag having been the full name of his father’s third wife.
Those names were usually bestowed informally: when men appear in records such as tax lists or ships’ manifests with a middle name, this will often be the father’s forename, put there to tell different people apart. John Donald MacDonald and John Neil MacDonald probably weren’t baptized with their middle names – they were just the sons of Donald MacDonald and Neil MacDonald respectively.
Naming patterns
Scots families often followed strict rules about naming children. The usual pattern was as shown on this chart:
Naming patterns. The arrows indicate the person after whom the child was named.
If this practice was followed strictly, and you know the names of all the children in the family, you can work out what the grandparents’ names would have been. Unfortunately, you will seldom know for sure who the eldest son was, and the system was not followed perfectly: in some families, the eldest son was named after the maternal grandfather, and if a child with a particular family name died, a sibling born later might be given the same one.
Problems arose when two grandparents had the same name. If both grandfathers were called Roderick, did you name your second son Roderick, as well as the first? Sometimes no, sometimes yes, though in such cases the second Roderick might be given a completely different nickname.
Naming patterns mean that first names stayed in families, but could migrate down through female lines. Unusual forenames can provide clues to ancestry: the forename Sorley is very rare in Harris, and according to Bill Lawson pretty much everyone with that name is descended one way or another from Sorley MacAulay, one of two MacAulay brothers who settled at Greosabhagh in 1780.
Surnames
When you encounter an ancestral surname, look it up in a reliable surname dictionary. Though far from perfect, the best starting-point is G.F. Black’s The Surnames of Scotland, Their Origin, Meaning, and History (New York Public Library, 1946). Some areas have specialist dictionaries, such as G. Lamb’s Orkney Surnames (Paul Harris Publishing, 1978).
It makes no sense trying to research a family line without seeing if the surname identifies a likely place or origin. You may never be able to trace back all the generations to that place, but at least you will know where the line is likely to have come from. Kinloch or Kinnock, for example, comes from Co. Fife, so a family of that name living in Inverness is likely to have migrated from the south, and any in Glasgow are likely to have moved from the east. Black is good at identifying surnames that can have more than one origin, thus helping you not to make unfounded assumptions.
Derivations
Most Scottish surnames, like so many others in the world, are from the following sources:
From
