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Surnames in the Highlands
While
surnames were used from quite an early date by the
fine
of the leading
Highland clans - those most closely related to the chief - most Highlanders were
identified until at least the 18th century, and often well into the 19th
century, by a combination of patronymics and bynames or nicknames. Even when
chiefs, church ministers, and government bureaucrats insisted on individuals
appearing in written records with surnames it doesn't mean those so-identified
used surnames in everyday life - or, and this is the important point, that their
surnames were fixed.Lairds
often adopted their wife's or their mother's surname when inheriting estates or
chiefships through them. So it's said that many Morrisons are in fact MacDonalds
by blood due to the marriage of a Morrison heiress many centuries ago; while the
current MacLeod chief is the great-grandson of a Hubert Walter who in 1901
married the heiress of the last of the
male MacLeods of Dunvegan. Even where estates and titles were not at stake
husbands who chose to follow the chiefs of their wife's clan might choose her
surname, or
have descendants who made that choice when surnames became necessary, because
they had become members by adoption of her clan. Ordinary
clanspeople might have less choice in the matter when ambitious chiefs like
Seaforth, Lovat, or Lochiel decreed that tenants must adopt their
surnames. So Mathesons & MacAndies might become MacKenzies; Barrons & Lees became
Frasers; and
the names
MacGillonie & MacMartin virtually disappeared as Camerons multiplied. Often,
however, at least for the first generation or two, their original surnames may
continue to appear in OPRs and Estate-Records as
"aliases" - so it's always worth checking back in the records for clues to the
origins of a particular branch of one of the greater clans (see the page on
Septs
).
The
most dramatic instances of apparent multiple-surnames often occur as a result of
the Englishing of awkward Gaelic names by English-speaking ministers or clerks.
Famous examples in Argyll include
MacLeays becoming Livingstones; MacIlvernocks becoming Grahams; MacCallums
becoming Doves; and MacIlvoyles becoming Bells. While the choice of the
English name sometimes appears to have been quite arbitrary (e.g. Livingstone for
MacLeay), in others there is some apparent connection between the two names; as for instance with MacCallum, the Gaelic
stem of which -
Colm
or
Columb
(the name of the famous Saint Columba) - is said
to stand for the dove of peace. There's also a connection between MacIlvolyle
and Bell which demonstrates just how tortured some of these derivations can be.
MacIlvolyle is a phonetic form of
MacGhillemhaoil
(the Gaelic "mh"
being pronounced like the English "v"), which is one of the two Gaelic names
usually translated as MacMillan, and a 16th century genealogy of a family
called Leny or de Lany (who were also MacMillans by descent) has the name as
MacGil
bile
because "...
mhaoil
" was phonetically similar to "
bhaoil
".
In this case therefore Bell is not a different English surname, it's just a
simpler form of the Gaelic original. Since MacMillans are also
found as Camerons (because the Lochaber branch were followers of
Lochiel) and Buchanans (because an 18th century Buchanan historian claimed the
MacMillans as a sept of his clan) there are documented examples of individual
MacMillans appearing with at least three surnames (e.g. an early 19th century emigrant who married in Scotland as "Cameron",
travelled across the Atlantic as "Buchanan", and lived in Canada as
"MacMillan").
For information on individual names see
George F. Black,
Surnames of
Scotland
(New York, 1946; Edinburgh, 2024 & 2024)
.
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