I have made some notes from quite a good book on the subject, which I think is titled "Sources for Scottish Genealogy and Family History" by D.J. Steel published by the Society of Genealogists in London. ISBN 090 1878 30 reprinted 1980. They are too long to quote but here is my understanding of what it said about aliases and patronymics. In some parts of Scotland, particularly Caithness and Sutherland,the use of patronymics survived in the parish register for formal as well as informal use. The patronymic does not include the surname. It reflects up to three or four generations of the person's (male) ancestors. (It may also include the croft or farm in,which the person dwelt; however I have not noticed much of this in Durness.) In Gaelic, Mac means son. A "John"who is a son of William would be called Iain Macuilleam. In the second and succeeding generations, Mac takes the genitive case and is aspirated (or softened) and becomes mhic, pronounced "vic" or 'ic . I'm not sure on the next point but I believe the name in the genitive case is also softened by adding an "i" after certain vowels. If John's father was William (Uilleam), his grandfather was Hugh (Uisdean) and his greatgrandfather was Hector (Eachann), his patronymic would be something like Macuilleammhicuisdeaniceachainn. The feminine of mac is nighean! , usually recorded as nin or nc but the patronymic in the second and succeding generations is male, i.e. daughter of ---, son of---son of---. In the case of the Durness register, the minister spoke gaelic but it was not his mother tongue and he was unfamiliar with the spelling of gaelic names so he recorded phonetic spellings. Perhaps this happened in other parishes. I think it helps to keep an open mind with regard to spellings. There are numerous books which give English equivalents of Gaelic names and vice versa. I have a couple and would be glad to try decipher any patronymics that members are interested in. They are sometimes useful for confirming that you are on the right path, when there are similar names to choose from. Aliases were not confined to patronymics and sometimes reflected a physical attribute, e.g. dubh (black/dark); ban(fair). Many Calders used an alias of Down, i.e. Donn (brown). They also sometimes have a recorded alias of Ekel but I don't know why. Ian ----- Original Message ----- From: Ron and Cathy Wagner Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 11:11 PM To: SCT-SUTHERLAND-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Parish Records Hi List Well...I have had quite a night looking over these parish records....I have read old records before from England...and these are no better )o: I am of the mind....that the McDonald's from Sutherland were not originally from Sutherland....one of their many stopovers....smile...for a generation or two. The McDonalds' were scarse....and the records hard to read....but out of about five McDonalds I have found so far three indicate they are from the Isle of Skye....so I think it is a good assumption on my part that is where mine came out of...the first one is Alexander McDonald in 1766 had a daughter Catherine and then not another mention of a McDonald again until 1781 when a Kenneth McLeod Smith and Catherine McDonald have a daughter,,,then a Murdoch Sutherland and a Christian McDonald have a son in 1785 suddenly in 1786 an Ewan McDonald and Flora McLeod his wife BOTH FROM THE ISLE OF SKYE....and a John McDonald and Henrietta McVee both again from the Isle of Skye...both have children... One thing I noticed on these records ...something I have never seen before....it would say...(example only) John Dunn alias Brown and his wife ...... About half the people on the parish record had an alias.....what is that all about?? some of the alias's looked like they were latin or something.....certainly not something that was decipherable.... I seen baptism records of this Fairly Gordon's family .....since I see that name on the list so often it of course took my eye.... The copying machine at the lds is broken....cant copy anything at all... Anyway..I am quite curious about this alias business.....if anyone knows what that is all about Cathy ==== SCT-SUTHERLAND Mailing List ==== You may, at times, wish to check out previous messages to this list. You can do this at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/SCT-SUTHERLAND-L/ ============================== Join the RootsWeb WorldConnect Project: Linking the world, one GEDCOM at a time. http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com<br clear=all><hr>Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at <a href="http://www.hotmail.com">http://www.hotmail.com</a>.<br></p>