What's In A Name?

Click Here for truly excellent article, "Introduction to the Derivation of Scottish Surnames" by William L. Kirk, Jr., Ph.D., 1 July 1992. Dr. Kirk  explains, for example, the use of patronymic surnames. “In the Highlands and Galloway, where “son of” was denoted by the prefix, Mac, rather than by the suffix, son, patronymic names were more common than they were in the Lowlands. The Mac could be prefixed to craft names as well as to forenames, giving, for example, Mac an t-saoir, son of the joiner, which became Macintyre, also, for example, the group of names denoting descent from an ecclesiastic: Macnab, Mactaggart, Macpherson and Macvicar, meaning son of the abbot, the priest, the parson, and the vicar, respectively.”

What Does Your Surname Mean?
Millions of us in the United States and Canada are descended from Scots. Scottish names in ancestry research can be confusing because of the variations in spelling in old parish records. There are several hundred different Scottish surnames in most of our family trees. The meaning of some are obvious: Paterson and Anderson for example. However, others aren't so obvious. A GREAT resource should you wish to learn the meaning of your surname is http://www.surnamedb.com/.

Spelling Variations of Surnames
Some surnames names have a large number of spelling variations. Those variations can cause difficulties in ancestry research. A spelling variation does not necessarily mean you are connected or not connected to a family that spells their name differently.

Records in Scotland were kept, prior to 1855, at the parish level. The clergy generally employed a clerk to do the recording. Those clerks were of varying levels of education and could be quite creative in their spelling when recording births, marriages and deaths. You should be aware of the spelling variations when researching your family. Otherwise, you could miss an important connection.

An excellent example is the name Lindsay. Wikipedia shows the following  spelling variations:

"Limesay Linday Linde Lindeci Lindensay Lindesa Lindesaia Lindesaie Lindesans Lindesay Lindesaye Lindese Lindesee Lindesei Lindeseia Lindeseie Lindesey Lindesi Lindesie Lindesins Lindessay Lindessaya Lindessaye Lindessey Lindesseye Lindessi Lindesy Lindesye Lindeszey Lindey Lindiesay Lindisay Lindisin Lindissa Lindissai Lindissay Lindisseia Lindsa Lindsai Lindsay Lindsaye Lindsey Lindsseie Lindyesaye Lindyssay Lindyssey Linsai Linsaie Linsay Linsey Linsee Linsley Linzee Lyncay Lynde Lynddesai Lynddessay Lynddessaye Lyndesai Lyndesay Lyndeseia Lyndeseie Lyndesey Lyndeseye Lyndesheie Lyndeshey Lyndesie Lyndesins Lyndessai Lyndessay Lyndessaye Lyndessey Lyndessy Lyndesy Lyndesya Lyndey Lyndezay Lyndisay Lyndissai Lyndissay Lyndisseye Lyndsa Lyndsaia Lyndsaie Lyndsay Lyndsey Lyndseye Lyndsy Lyndysay Lyndyssay Lyndyssey Lynsay Lynse Lynsey".
 

One further comment on parish records: the thoroughness of the records varies greatly from parish to parish. It was apparently not unheard of for the parish clerk to get drunk or angry with the clergyman/employer and destroy records out of spite.

Transcription of Online Records
A further complication in ancestry research is the quality of transcription for online records. The 1910 US census at ancestry.com shows the Robert Lockerbie family as:

Transcribed Name	Actual Name
Robb Lochalie Jessie Lochalie Jessie W Sodis Mrs John Sodis Gladetone Lotherke Sr David Lotherke Gan Gadda Lotherke	Robert Lockerbie Jessie Lockerbie Jessie Martha Dodds John Dodds Thomas Gladstone Lockerbie David Lockerbie Jean Lockerbie

Not one name was transcribed properly when this record was put online.

It's very important to view the scanned image of the original document rather than relying on the transcribed version. This family was hard to find in the 1910 census as they had moved from Delaware to Louisiana prior to the census and to North Carolina after the census. There was no consistency of location to identify them.

Persistence pays off!

Scottish Naming Conventions for Forenames

Our ancestors in Scotland usually named their children according to a formula which was abandoned only after emigration from Scotland, sometimes not until the second or third generation after emigration. The naming convention is as follows.

• 1st son named after father's father
• 1st daughter named after mother's mother
• 2nd son named after mother's father
• 2nd daughter named after father's mother
• 3rd son named after father
• 3rd daughter named after mother
• 4th son named after father's oldest brother
• 4th daughter named after mother's oldest sister

When all else fails in connecting an individual to a particular family, sometimes the forename of the individual is a very strong clue. My own tree contains many examples like the one below:

Matthew Leggat (b. 1791) m 1838 Jean Aikenhead (b. 1811)

• 1st son - Matthew b.1839 named after father's father, Matthew Lygate.
• 2nd son - James b. 1840 named after mother's father, James Aikenhead.
• 3rd son - William b. 1843 couldn't be named after father, Matthew Leggat, because there was already a Matthew b. 1839. William was named after father's grandfather, William Leggat.
• 4th son - Robert b. 1847 named after father's oldest brother, Robert Leggat.
• 1st daughter - Elizabeth b. 1845 named after mother's mother, Elizabeth Struthers.
• 2nd daughter - Agnes b. 1847 named after father's mother, Agnes Granger.
• no third and fourth daughters.

Matthew Leggat (1839), James Leggat (1840), and Robert (1847) all named their firstborn sons Matthew after their father. Consequently, there were three first cousins named Matthew Leggat, none with middle names. Needless to say, after a couple of generations this naming convention can get complicated, especially in parish records before 1855 where the mother's name was not always recorded for a birth.

There are other issues complicating forenames. Jean was a very common name for females in Scotland. However, the legal name Jean could show up in census documents as: Jeannie, Jenny, Jessie, Jeanette, Janet, etc..