Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 349

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 349

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/349

Some of the Academy's early reports contain errors that we haven't yet corrected. Please use it with caution.

Greetings,

Here's the information we found on your 13th-century Scottish name, which you wanted to refer to wit or ferocity in combat.

We recommend that you read the Web page "Scottish Names 101" before reading this. It contains background information about Scottish names which will be useful to you. The URL is:

http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scot_names_101.html

You said you were looking for a "name" and we weren't sure whether you meant a given name (or "first name") or a byname ("last name").

Given names generally weren't given for their meaning. Although most names ultimately derived from a normal word in some language, once they were used as names, they lost their close association with their root meanings. Bynames were given for the purpose of describing someone, so their descriptive meanings are much more explicit. If you want a name which describes you in some way, the best approach is to choose a Scots given name from your period and a byname that carries the meaning you want.

Some of the most common Scots given names for men are William, Roger, Thomas, Walter, Gilbert, Alexander, Davy, and Edward. We also found "Lowrens," a form of your name Laurence. You can find a list of given names (and also a list of surnames) from your period on the web at

http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/scottish14/

We don't have many references for the meaning of Scots names, but there's a great deal of overlap between Scots and English, so that many words are common to both. In addition, many names come from French, which was spoken by the Normans who inhabited both England and Scotland. So, even though our sources are English we have good reasons for believing that these names were also used in Scotland.

There are a fairly small list of names which might be appropriate. In Scotland we found (1)

le Estrraunge 1255, Strange 1296, le Strange 1340 (meaning "strong")

We found these names in England which are appropriate for Scots as well (2):

Arval Benicouer and Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel

(1) Black, G. "The Surnames of Scotland."

(2) Reaney, P.H. "The Origin of English Surnames."