A List of Feminine Personal Names Found in Scottish Records

Part One: Introduction

by Talan Gwynek (Brian M. Scott, scott@math.csuohio.edu)

Last modified 27 June 2000

The following names all occur in citations from George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland (The New York Public Library, New York, 1989). Most of them are cited from our period; a few are from the first half of the 17th century. Neither the list of names nor the list of citations for each name is exhaustive. First, the list is a by-product of other research; and secondly, I have edited it considerably. Most entries have been kept because Withycombe's Dictionary of English Christian Names either gives no dated citation, fails to mention a particular spelling, or omits the name altogether. However, when a name appears in many variants I have not troubled to remove those already given by Withycombe.

Each entry is headed by the name as found in the citation. This is followed by the date of the citation. (Note that a. is ante `before'.) In a few cases names were dated only by the name of the Scottish king in whose reign the document in question was written; those I have replaced by approximate dates from the middle of the reign.

The date is followed by a reference for this citation. Thus, for instance, [RENIGOD, 688] in the first entry means that Ada can be found on page 688 in Black's article on the surname RENIGOD. Warning: I have not yet had time to check these notes completely. The original notes on which they are based were taken under moderately trying circumstances, and it is possible that in a few cases the surname given as the reference is adjacent to the correct one. There may be other minor errors as well. If you find any, please let me know.

In a few cases I have added various notes in parentheses. In particular, when a citation is from after 1600 I have in some cases added a note on the occupation or marital status of the woman if it suggested that she might have been born in the 16th century. Other notes have to do with the names themselves and are self-explanatory.

Such notations as `Amie: = Anne 1541' indicate that according to Black the same person was cited in 1541 as both Amie and Anne; the entry `Eschina: c.1170 = Aeschine c.1160', on the other hand, indicates that the same person was cited as Eschina in about 1170 and as Aeschine about ten years earlier.

The letter z is generally to be pronounced like the y in yes.

I hope that this list will be of some use. It does provide period dates for a number of diminutives that we have not, to my knowledge, previously documented.

Pre-1400 Names
Post-1400 Names

A List of Feminine Personal Names Found in Scottish Records: Pre-1400 Names

A List of Feminine Personal Names Found in Scottish Records : Post-1400 Names