Hi Rob..... >Which explains why every one of my male S-I ancestors is named either >John, James, Thomas and the women are all Margarets and Marys. One of >the joys of our genealogy. Yeh! If you got a moment or if you are depressed and need cheered up, read the front essay of Black "Surnames of Scotland". He recounts how, due to the degree with which Scots subscribed to what is often called the Scottish naming pattern but is really a European one (or...the ENglish, the French, the Irish, the Dutch, etc, naming pattern, all the same with varying degrees of adherence) that in some small villages where everyone is related, everyone would have the same name, like John Smith. The way people identified you was with a 'by name' -- Red, Fatty, John the Grouch, Dirty John, John the Baker. Sometime the by names 'stuck' and eventually became a surname. He has some funny stories of the assimulation of Irish into Scottish surnames (3 generations, 6 surnames!!) and also of a case in the highlands in the 1700s where your surname shifted based on the landlord. This was in keeping with Scottish clan custom -- you belonged to the head clan, regardless of DNA. So the day after the McDonalds left and the Campbells took over you had babies surnamed Campbell in the church records. Frequently we bear the surname of our ancestors' oppressors. Apparently you are more likely to actually have the DNA of your sept name if its Irish, or so say the experts (not me, I'm just repeating what I've read....). My family recycled old names but not in the 'right' order. My sister had the first male grandchild. Rather than naming him WIlliam after my father or after his own father (a Richard), my sister named him after our great great grandfather Henry Kelly. My father took it in good stead. "Henry the First!" he exclaimed, reminding the festering nest of Irish and Scotch Irish into which he'd married of the existence of the kings of England. This immediately put everyone but him in a bad mood. He was forbade to call Henry that but he'd got in the last word anyway and everyone knew it. I hate my middle name too! Anyway I must report that the Queen of England has apparently bestowed a small blessing on me. Since I have moved, I was putting away trinkets including my empty tea tin collection. I checked to make sure they were empty and not filled with tea or two year old dried fruit or bugs. Inside the QUeen Elizabeth Jubilee tin was a Canadian two dollar bill with her picture on it! Must have been deposited by a Canadian roommate I had had in California. Maybe I should obtain a "George Bush" tea tin and see what manifests. Linda Merle ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net