Hello everyone, Anglicisation of surnames was linked to the decline of Gaelic and an influx of English-speakers to Bute, I believe. People without Gaelic found the names difficult to pronounce. Officials - teachers, registrars etc - anglicised the names perhaps. I think the names were either turned into a form easier for an English speaker to get their tongue round or possibly they were translated. For example, according to Angus Martin, writing about Kintyre - just across the water from Bute - Duncan represents Mac Dhonnchaidh (MacConnochie) "son of Duncan". Possibly The Surnames of Scotland by G F Black would tells us more. Does anyone have access to a copy? Angus Martin has the following to say on anlicisation of surnames in Kintyre. "There is no doubt that for many an ambitious person .... intent on social advancement, the Gaelic stamp on his character was reckoned a misfortune and a handicap. A vernacular manner of speech anbd the ingrained traits of upbringing may be eradicated .... but what would one do with such a name as Brolachan or Loynachan? The answer of course is that one would change it." But he says motives of self-advancement don't explain the rash of surname changes which took hold in the eighteenth century. "In a society which - in south Kintyre at any rate - was increasingly succumbing to Lowland ways and in which the Lowland model increasing represented advancement in that society, Gaelic and the outward marks of the Gaelic character were becoming unavoidably declasse. The reasoning, whether conscious or otherwise, may be expressed thus - if one's surname was being torn out of its Gaelic mould and hammered into something more resembling a Scotch or English form, then why resist? The greater number of name changes were, therefore, simply the product of a long process of trasmutation on the lips of people and at the hands of scribes who were ignorant of Gaelic orthography." From "Kintyre The Hidden Past" by Angus Martin Bill - many thanks for doing all the look-ups and posting the census info to the list, Madeleine