A thread on the Message Board for Angus leads me to ask out of curiosity - how many of your Scots families follow the classic Scots naming pattern? My view has always been that you should use ancestry to deduce a naming pattern, not a naming pattern to deduce ancestry. No harm in using it to define priorities in a search, but it's not evidence. My personal experience has been that I'm 1/8th Scots (one G-grandfather from Dundee) and _if_ that's a representative percentage, of the 751 families in my database, 93 would be Scots. Well, I've seen just two of those families follow a naming pattern. One was a family into which my relative married, so the pattern was before they arrived. The other came from California - the maternal grandfather was Scots, but they got the order of the first two daughters wrong. So call it one-and-a-half families. As I said on the board, the pattern unquestionably exists in _some_ areas and eras and I'd sort of got the idea that it would be stronger in the Gaelic areas. However, a later post said that that something like half of Forfarian's families on both coasts follow the pattern. So - have I just got a contrary bunch (from Dundee but also coming down from Dunkeld)? In a completely unscientific survey - what's the feeling on how many of your Scots families from wherever follow the pattern? Cheers Adrian Bruce

I haven't analysed it (yet!) but my MASTERTON families in Fife and Forfar, in I would say equal measure, follow the Scottish naming pattern quite strongly. I'd estimate at least 50 percent for the period between about 1750 and 1900 (earlier dates subject to the qualifier below). Starts to diminish towards the end of the 19th century. For times earlier than 1855, when most relationships (unless backed up by legal documents) are built on the balance of probabilities, I regard it as adding to the confidence level of a parent/child relationship, but certainly not treating it as conclusive evidence. But In my lowland families it's certainly not a myth. Gordon Masterton On 15 Dec 2012, at 21:06, "Adrian Bruce" <abruce@madasafish.com> wrote: > > A thread on the Message Board for Angus leads me to ask out of curiosity - > how many of your Scots families follow the classic Scots naming pattern? My > view has always been that you should use ancestry to deduce a naming > pattern, not a naming pattern to deduce ancestry. No harm in using it to > define priorities in a search, but it's not evidence. > > My personal experience has been that I'm 1/8th Scots (one G-grandfather from > Dundee) and _if_ that's a representative percentage, of the 751 families in > my database, 93 would be Scots. Well, I've seen just two of those families > follow a naming pattern. One was a family into which my relative married, so > the pattern was before they arrived. The other came from California - the > maternal grandfather was Scots, but they got the order of the first two > daughters wrong. So call it one-and-a-half families. > > As I said on the board, the pattern unquestionably exists in _some_ areas > and eras and I'd sort of got the idea that it would be stronger in the > Gaelic areas. However, a later post said that that something like half of > Forfarian's families on both coasts follow the pattern. > > So - have I just got a contrary bunch (from Dundee but also coming down from > Dunkeld)? In a completely unscientific survey - what's the feeling on how > many of your Scots families from wherever follow the pattern? > > Cheers > Adrian Bruce > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ANGUS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message