Surname- Souness-Is it a Scots one?

[dycer]

The Family seems to have settled mainly in the Edinburgh/East Lothian area.My Branch orginates from Haddington but is it a Scots Surname?
I've heard it pronounced "Sooness" and "Sowness".
One suggestion that was put forward many years ago that it is a corruption of "South Ness" but another suggestion was that the Family came across with William the Conqueror
Anyone like to hazard a guess?
George

[DavidWW]

Black's "Surnames of Scotland" can only offer speculative origins, -

"son of Sones"
variant of Soonhouse.

Furthest back Black can get is a Sownes in Aberdeenshire in 1696.

David

[dycer]

Thanks David.
I knew it was going to be a speculative answer.
Interesting on the Aberdeenshire angle,though,we may have returned to our roots In my lifetime we moved north from Fife and ended up in the village which is in my Forum Name.Well it was in the "Shire" when I lived there but has now been swallowed up by the "City".
George

[alex19canteen]

Surname: Souness
Recorded as Suinhouse, Sounhouse, Sownes, Sounness, and Souness, this is a famous but quite rare, Scottish surname. It is locational and probably originates from a place in ancient times called 'Sun-hlaw' and now Sunilaw, in the Scottish Borders, near to the town of Coldstream. The name means the south hill, or just possibly the sunny hill, and although it may seem to be wide of the mark, we do believe that this surname which has continually changed its spelling over the past five centuries, has this or a very similar origin. Locational surnames are very prone to transposition since by their very nature they are 'from' names. That is to say surnames generally given to people after they left their original homes to move somewhere else. Spelling over the centuries being at best indifferent, and local dialects very thick, soon lead to the development of 'sounds like' names, often far removed from the original forms. In this case we have recordings from the Scottish registers and charters such as those of Thomas Suinhouse of Blainsleyis in 1608, John Sownhous of Blainslie in 1660, William Sownes of Aberdeenshire in 1696, whilst one Adam Souness is recorded as dying at Ormiston, near Edinburgh in 1939.

http://www.surnamedb.com/surname.aspx?name=souness

Alex.

[dycer]

Alex,
I rather like the "famous but rare" bit.Not my branch though.
I can concur on the changing spellings.
Although we are definitely one "n" my Granfather registered his two elder sons "nn" in the 1890's.I think this was probably an error at the time of registration as the 1901 Census records the Family as "n".
George

[Sinnis.KLM]

Hi! Is this thread still active?

My grandfather, Doug Sinnis, was a genealogist. He passed away last January (2023) at 93 years old. Two brothers emigrated to Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Canada in the 1800's. James and John Sinnis. Except, their name wasn't "Sinnis" in Scotland... It was Sowness/Sowness/Souness... When they arrived in Canada their name was written down how it was pronounced and they signed everything with an "X".

Papa thought that James and John's father's name was Richard but from what I can find, I see that there was a William Sowness and a Katherine Anderson who had a baby boy, John, baptized in 1800 ... The same year that John Sinnis was born. James William Sinnis was born in 1794 in East Lothian... They were both miners but came to Canada and given land grants and farmed. John Sinnis did not marry, but James Sinnis was married twice in Canada and had a bunch of kids. He is my great-great-great grandfather. His son was also James William and my other grandfather (my parents are second cousins) was William Stanley Sinnis, so it seems likely that the father of James and John was indeed William Sowness.

Papa worked on his genealogy from around the late 70's or early 80's onwards. This is the branch that he was unable to continue and I would like to continue researching it and learning about our ancestors.

It seems like there are oodles of Sowness/Souness in the East Lothian area in the late 1700's/early 1800's... Hoping to make a link.

Thanks