Precisely the point Christopher. Before there were records we can say anything without being able to prove any of it directly, therefore carelessly thought out speculation is a snare to the unwary genealogist. But if we make a thorough study of the history of a region using the ancient records that do exist, and views of the times in the context of historical mega-trends that have been studied for that era, we can begin to piece together speculation that is at least a well educated guess. For instance, that a few families within Clan MacIntyre (and a number of other Scottish and Irish clans also) came to be referred to as Wryghts by the Norman rulers is entirely plausible. I doubt seriously that the other members of the clan started out calling this family unit 'Wryghts' so this name did not come from the clan. It came from outside rulers. That these select families were among those who were the first to break away (or forced to break away) from the Clan and establish themselves as somewhat separate social units, is also consistent with the wider social trends of that era. These families became one element of the commercial interface between the Clan and the ruling class of England both in Roman times as well as Norman times. So I would say that clan MacIntyre claiming Wrights as a part of their clan is very likely to be a correct speculation. But what I think also makes sense is that the MacIntyre family member that began to be referred to as a Wryght, did not come from any language root in the native MacIntyre tongue. It came from outside the clan. From the Normans and their Anglo-Saxon underlings. My other objection is that clan MacIntyre is not the only Scottish or Irish clan that can make the claim of Wright members. And all of them that claim the Wrights are more than likely to have some truth to that claim. It is parallel to the finding that there were at least a hundred unrelated Wrights found scattered all over the land by 1400 (as evidenced by today's Y-DNA results). So, although we only have myth and speculation to support these types of claims, at least the claim is not inconsistent with what we know about the social history of the times. Key elements of the social history of the times are common to all surnames so that we do have documents and written accounts that tell us some important things for certain. For example, we know that the Gaelic/Celtic language group was in England centuries before the Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Angles, Jutes or Danes brought their languages there. It then follows logically that those clan names that derived from that language group are, by necessity much older than any written records and certainly much older than any surname of Anglo-Saxon, Latin or French origins. We also know that the break-up of the tribe/clan social structure was greatly delayed in Scotland and Ireland compared to England. A good part of the reason for that delay rests in the fact that the Romans held no influence whatsoever in Ireland and very little in Scotland, and Rome was one of the earliest societies to push family allegiances above tribal allegiances as a social norm. It was one of those social levers that the Romans used to gain and keep control of vast new territories. Buying the allegiance of key families within a tribe or clan and then insuring their protection and continued loyalty was the tactic of choice, which in combination with their formidable military allowed the Romans to control vast territories that would have been impossible for them to control with Roman Legions alone. This influence survived the Dark Ages to emerge in the Middle Ages as the model for the perpetuation of kingships, lordships and as the middle class grew, for the landed gentry and merchant classes. Eventually this pre-eminence of family unity versus allegiance to larger social groupings included everyone from the highest to the lowest in the land. This, too, argues for it being quite natural that a Wright family was part of a MacIntyre clan. What we will never know for sure for any particular clan or tribe is when and exactly how did one of its clan families separate itself out and establish a separate identity as a Wright family unit in preference to continuing to identifying itself as a member of the clan or tribe. It seems certain to me that it was not the clan/tribe that gave them the name Wryght and drove them out to stand on their own. They were pulled out of the clan by outsiders (Romans, Anglo-Saxons or Normans) by virtue of the recognition of their special talents for building things with wood. So, I agree with you up to the extent that you have taken the subject. I just mean to indicate that there is more of a slant and justification to it than either you or Catline have outlined. To the enjoyment of discussion, Mike -----Original Message----- From: Christopher Wright <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, Sep 11, 2010 12:04 pm Subject: Re: [WRIGHT] Wright - origin of name?? On Sep 11, 2010, at 12:56 AM, MichaelWright12 wrote: > Catline Wright (author of the piece you reference) writes a pretty > piece on the origins of the Wright surname. Unfortunately there is > very little truth to any of it. Nothing is ever so elegant or > simple as Catline has suggested. It is a pretty piece and may even be partly true, but it would take some very hard slogging to separate the leaps of faith from actual history > > For starters, there is no root word in the Celtic languages of pre- > Conquest Northern England that would lead to any form of the Wright > surname, so that identifying the north of England as the seat of > the origin of the surname is extremely improbable. This isn't necessarily true either. Clan MacIntyre claims a sort of kinship with the Wrights by naming the Wright family as a sept of Clan Macintyre. MacIntyre derives from the Scots Gaelic 'Mac an-t- Saoir' meaning son of ship-builder or son of carpenter. It doesn't seem like a big leap of faith to infer some common ancestry between North English Wrights and Scottish MacIntyres, given that the borders were pretty fluid. That doesn't prove that all the Wrights have a north England origin--'wright' is a Saxon word for 'builder' or 'maker' and the Saxons first arrived in the south and east of England, and there were plenty of builders all over England. The MacIntyre surname goes back a lot further than written records and it's impossible to separate legend from fact, but you can find a good presentation of both at <http://www.electricscotland.com/ webclans/m/macintyre/> Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at [email protected] | this distance" (last words of Gen. .......................................| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864) http://www.skypoint.com/members/chrisw/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message