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27 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

 

As trade grew in burghs Scots did indeed naturally become the lingua franca. Until we get a settled pre Highland  clearance linguistic stabilisation of Highland and Lowland. Basically wherever there was mountains was Gaelic and anywhere south of the Moray firth with fertile plains or ports was Scots.

 

You missed out Norn. Does anyone still speak it? I know you mentioned Norse variants earlier on.

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10 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

You missed out Norn. Does anyone still speak it? I know you mentioned Norse variants earlier on.

No it's gone now but was a first language of communities up to the 15th century I think.

I believe it was spoken by more isolated communities and older people in Caithness as late as the 1790s or thereabouts.

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39 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Were the early “Britons” around Ayrshire and the Rock not eventually driven out to Wales? It’s been years since I read about it.

Maybe. 

The Kingdom of Strathclyde was "Welsh" or more accurately p-Celtic or Brythonic

The displaced rulers of Strathclyde might have gone off to live with kindred in Wales but the natives likely stayed and assimilated.

Place name evidence is a really good indicator of how violently or gradually people were displaced.

There are lots of p - Brythonic place names kicking around there. Not least the Clyde (Clywd) itself. This suggests that for hundreds of years afterwards people who used those names continued to live there.

In contrast in the outer Hebrides there is plenty of evidence of Pictish settlement bit no Pictish place names. This suggests the Norse Gael take over was pretty swift and comprehensive with no natives being left in a short period of time.

Edited by invergowrie arab
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54 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

No it's gone now but was a first language of communities up to the 15th century I think.

I believe it was spoken by more isolated communities and older people in Caithness as late as the 1790s or thereabouts.

It is generally believed to have died out on Foula in Shetland about the 1780s and had been undergoing replacement by Scots (which in turn is now being replaced by Scottish Standard English especially in Lerwick) since the late 1460s albeit with a strange pronunciation compared to the Scottish mainland. Even after Norn had died out elsewhere the patronymic -son and -daugher Norse surname system was still very much on the go amongst descendants of the Norse until around 1800 or so when the Church of Scotland  started insisting that the surname used by the father of a family was also used by his children and then passed down the subsequent generations like a Scottish surname. For centuries after the Scottish takeover of Shetland there were distinct Scottish and Norse populations living in Shetland basically, but over time they eventually merged into modern Shetlanders with a largely Scottish culture but a strong emotional idea of still being Norse in some way rather than Scottish.

Edited by LongTimeLurker
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31 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

It is generally believed to have died out on Foula in Shetland about the 1780s and had been undergoing replacement by Scots (which in turn is now being replaced by Scottish Standard English especially in Lerwick) since the late 1460s albeit with a strange pronunciation compared to the Scottish mainland. Even after Norn had died out elsewhere the patronymic -son and -daugher Norse surname system was still very much on the go amongst descendants of the Norse until around 1800 or so when the Church of Scotland  started insisting that the surname used by the father of a family was also used by his children and then passed down the subsequent generations like a Scottish surname. For centuries after the Scottish takeover of Shetland there were distinct Scottish and Norse populations living in Shetland basically, but over time they eventually merged into modern Shetlanders with a largely Scottish culture but a strong emotional idea of still being Norse in some way rather than Scottish.

That's really interesting. I didn't realise that about the patronymic naming system but it's exactly the same in Gaelic. It's not until the Kirk started to keep records in the late 18th early 19th century that Gaels bothered with surnames. You were just John son of Donald.

When they did get round to it no one knew what their surname should be so they either stuck with their fathers name or just took their lairds name.

That's why your average shinty team has more coach wheels than surnames.

I was doing some family tree research and got back to 1830s Glenelg where out of a population of 2000 there are three surnames. Combine this with Gaelic only having about a dozen forenames means that even today in places like Barra or Uist many won't be known locally by their forename and surname but will have descriptive or nicknames like Black John, Tall Robert , Donald of the red hill etc or will be known locally by their patronymic name.

 

Who would have thought a man balancing bread on his head would have got us here.

Edited by invergowrie arab
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31 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

That's really interesting. I didn't realise that about the patronymic naming system but it's exactly the same in Gaelic. It's not until the Kirk started to keep records in the late 18th early 19th century that Gaels bothered with surnames. You were just John son of Donald.

I'd have thought the Kirk would have kept baptismal records long before this - possibly since the 16th C or is that optimistic?  I'd also have assumed that there would have been some for of baptismal registration/record for those Highland communities that had a priest prior to the Reformation.  I have no evidence to back this up but my gut feeling is that the assumption/standardisation of surnames in Highland Scotland had very little to do with the Kirk itself and was much more to do with the encroachment of modernity.

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56 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

That's really interesting. I didn't realise that about the patronymic naming system but it's exactly the same in Gaelic. It's not until the Kirk started to keep records in the late 18th early 19th century that Gaels bothered with surnames. You were just John son of Donald.

 

In some clans the forename skips a generation so if your name is Donald MacDonald your Grandad is Donald but your Dad can be John.

Edited by welshbairn
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1 hour ago, invergowrie arab said:

 

I was doing some family tree research and got back to 1830s Glenelg where out of a population of 2000 there are three surnames. Combine this with Gaelic only having about a dozen forenames means that even today in places like Barra or Uist many won't be known locally by their forename and surname but will have descriptive or nicknames like Black John, Tall Robert , Donald of the red hill etc or will be known locally by their patronymic name.

 

 

McCloskeys are ten a penny round Dungiven and environs, so the various branches have nicknames - if you're Damien McCloskey you'll be known locally as Damien Roe/Damien Quee/Damien Fatrik/Damien Dubh (the "black" McCloskeys, presumably for their swarthy complexion and dark hair).

O'Kanes would also have nicknames as they are also thick on the ground, as are McKennas around Maghera.

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3 hours ago, invergowrie arab said:

Pretty much.

The Bernicians first kicked off "English" in "Scotland" around 500 AD.

Since then it has been indigneous to the Lothians and Roxburghshire.

For the next 1000 years Scotland would be home to a variety of kingdoms and languages including variants of Norse, Gaelic, Brythonic and English. During that time at different points Pictish, Gaelic, Latin, Norman French and English/Scots would all have been a lingua franca for different times and classes.

If we fast forward to 15/16 century you could probably reasonably say Scots dominated south of the Antonine wall and Gaelic north. The exceptions to this were Galloway and south Ayrshire which remained Gaelic speaking for a long time and the Angus, aberdeenshire, moray coast which was Scots speaking.

As trade grew in burghs Scots did indeed naturally become the lingua franca. Until we get a settled pre Highland  clearance linguistic stabilisation of Highland and Lowland. Basically wherever there was mountains was Gaelic and anywhere south of the Moray firth with fertile plains or ports was Scots.

 

It's getting off topic now so just to say SF are class.

 

Cracking post mate. You know your onions 

 

Edit: you read any David Crystal? He makes stuff like the origins of English so accessible 

Edited by madwullie
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52 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

I'd have thought the Kirk would have kept baptismal records long before this - possibly since the 16th C or is that optimistic?  I'd also have assumed that there would have been some for of baptismal registration/record for those Highland communities that had a priest prior to the Reformation.  I have no evidence to back this up but my gut feeling is that the assumption/standardisation of surnames in Highland Scotland had very little to do with the Kirk itself and was much more to do with the encroachment of modernity.

I may be attributing to the Kirk what was in fact the census man when these started in 1855.  

Only got my own experience to go on but when doing the family tree stuff it seems that if you have people living in burghs - Montrose and Stonehaven being the ones for my paternal grandmothers side then records do indeed go way way back. I have records for churches all around Kincardineshire going back to the late 1600s and some Edinburgh stuff of a similar vintage.

All the Gaelic stuff gets really patchy once you are into the early 19th century to just being non existant beyond 1780 odd. 

My own theory, and it is nothing more than a guess, is that in the burghs where land, business and property ownership were all very important then you needed to keep records.

If you work a croft with no security of tenure why keep records as you aren't going to pass anything on. Or perhaps they did keep records but were just less fastidious about making sure they got kept for a long time or the conditions they kept them in.

 

That said some of the hardest stuff to find is in the mid 1800s by the time the Gaels and Irish in my family had moved to Glasgow and Dundee. Some of the variations on the surnames in the census are wild and you kind of forget that for 19th century Lowland Scots, names we wouldn't blink an eye at these days , must have been very strange to them.

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13 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

I may be attributing to the Kirk what was in fact the census man when these started in 1855.  

Only got my own experience to go on but when doing the family tree stuff it seems that if you have people living in burghs - Montrose and Stonehaven being the ones for my paternal grandmothers side then records do indeed go way way back. I have records for churches all around Kincardineshire going back to the late 1600s and some Edinburgh stuff of a similar vintage.

All the Gaelic stuff gets really patchy once you are into the early 19th century to just being non existant beyond 1780 odd. 

1855 was when compulsory registration of births was enacted.  There were censuses before that but, when I had a shot at tracing my auld man's family in Sutherland, the evidence was scant/incomplete/confusing.  I certainly had better luck looking at the maternal side in Airdrie/Shotts/Chapelhall which tends to back your notion.

Highland names though were funny.  My father's antecedents had names such as Johninia, Hectorina and Angusina - but I think this was a Victorian convention.

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42 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

1855 was when compulsory registration of births was enacted.  There were censuses before that but, when I had a shot at tracing my auld man's family in Sutherland, the evidence was scant/incomplete/confusing.  I certainly had better luck looking at the maternal side in Airdrie/Shotts/Chapelhall which tends to back your notion.

Highland names though were funny.  My father's antecedents had names such as Johninia, Hectorina and Angusina - but I think this was a Victorian convention.

It has certainly gone right out of fashion but you will still see older highland women with names like Williamina, Thomasina or  Alexina. Of course we wouldn't think anything of a Christina, Davina or a Georgina.

PS you are quite right the first census as we know it was 1841 with others starting in 1801.

Edited by invergowrie arab
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6 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

It has certainly gone right out of fashion but you will still see older highland women with names like Williamina, Thomasina or  Alexina. Of course we wouldn't think anything of a Christina, Davina or a Georgina.

PS you are quite right the first census as we know it was 1841 with others starting in 1801.

I have a cousin from Thurso called Georgina - pronounced George-Eye-nah.  I also had a fling with a girl from Romford with the same name pronounced George-eeeee-nah.  

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