Am I onto something? Would like opinion

[sheilajim]

Hi All

I have a GGrandfather named Henry Moncrief McLaren. His mother Mary Mckinnon McLaren died in 1855, that great year for certificates. Thanks to that I have her parents names. Her husband Neil McLaren is another matter altogether. I have the OPR of their marriage which tells nothing, and he only shows up on the 1841 Census at 31 years old. He has already died by the time of the 1851 Census. She was from Mull and I supposed that Neil McLaren was from there too.

Because he wasn't around that long I had almost forgotton him, but today when I looked on SP for him I found a Neil McLaren born in Argyll in 1810 in Ardchatten. The date matched perfectly with the 1841 Census.

Googling for maps of Argyll, I found that Ardchattan was close to Mull.
The OPR record gives the name of the parents as Duncan Mclaren and Cathrine McIlreach. Neil's oldest son is named Duncan. This would follow the Scottish naming pattern.

I looked for possible brothers and sisters. I found three births that were possible, John, 1808, Jean. 1817 and Catherine, 1814, all born in Ardchattan.
My problem is that the parents of these three possible siblings are named Duncan McLaurin and Catherine Macilriach. Could these be the same couple that are listed in 1810 as Duncan McLaren and Cathrine McIlreach?

I have another problem, my GGrandfather Henry McLaren and his brother Duncan always spelled their names as McLaren.
I found the death(1876) Cert for one of the children of Duncan McLaurin and Catherine McIlreach, by name of John the oldest child and his name is spelt McLaurin, not McLaren.

My question is this: Are these the same family? Am I onto something, or is it just wishful thinking, hoping to get more information.

I would like anyones opinion on the matter and apologize for rambling on so long.

Regards

Sheila

P.S. Is Argyllshire considered the Highlands?

[SarahND]

My problem is that the parents of these three possible siblings are named Duncan McLaurin and Catherine Macilriach. Could these be the same couple that are listed in 1810 as Duncan McLaren and Cathrine McIlreach?

Absolutely!!! Spelling has only become standardized comparatively recently. The exact spelling of a name didn't used to be as important as we feel it is now. Those names are incredibly close if you say them out loud. As a phonetician I would have no hesitation in saying they are the same, but if a native Scot begs to differ, I will listen!
All the best,
Sarah

[sheilajim]

Hi Sarah

I thought that they would be the same. I am wondering why the next generation would spell them a different way. My GGrandfather spelling his name as McLaren, and his possible uncle spelling his name as McLaurin.


Regards

Sheila

[Russell]

I would agree entirely Sarah

Argyll was very definitely Highland Sheila and Gaelic was used by the locals. The spellings you have found are probably closer to the Gaelic than the sanitized, Anglicised versions used over the past 75-100 years.

The person registering the birth or marriage would write down what they felt was a close approximation of the name. We have a marriage certificate from Torosay where the name McGilvray is given four different spellings - on the same document All written by the Registrar

e.g. -The name Mcilriach could also have been written as McIlwraith.

As Sarah suggests you have to say them out loud and if you can manage a Highland accent at the same time, you have some idea of the problems the person recording the event would have had. They were not always fluent Gaelic speakers either which compounded the problem.

Grab them quick before they, like the Sylkies, slide away out of reach.

Russell

[StewL]

Shiela

I too have a lang deid yin in my line where the spelling differs in the surname. My gggrandfather Daniel Laurie pops up at times in the late 1800's with the Lawrie spelling for no apparent reason, and he could read and write Then reverts back to the Laurie spelling.

There is another line although not directly related, where my cousins fathers line changes from O'Neill to Neil around 1874 although this could be as a result of Anglicising/Scotifing the name away from it Irish origins.

Even though I dont have the skills and training of Sarah, when I was reading your post I could see the definite links with the names.

[SarahND]

Hi Sheila,
I have Stewart/Steward/Stuart and Frazer/Frazier/Fraser in parallel lines of my tree. It's whatever they decided on when it suddenly started to matter The worst is an Irish line with descendants called Rattican, Rattekin, Radigan, Raticane, Rhadigan, etc, with about a dozen variants, and all these are related people

Well, it makes it more fun
Sarah

[emanday]

Hi Sheila,

The only vowel my Crichton lot haven't used is "u" and they swopped "ch" and "gh" as the mood took them! As for my Girtrig bunch - well they were just downright awkward

Like Sarah said, it is the sound of the names that was written down, not always accurately, often because the writer was not necessarily from the same area.

[killearnan]

In terms of spelling variation, that's nothing.......I'm up to 43 spellings for Learoyd and almost as many for Batchelder.

I've noticed it more in the US than in my Scottish research, but it is interesting to watch the developmetn of standardized spellings and of alphabetization. Early on in the colonies/states, names are in random order -- by the early 1800s, they tend to be either geographic or lumped by first letter. It is only around 1900 that I consistently see non-geographic lists in 'real' alphatbetical order (more than first letter considered). Not sure if anyone has really looked at it but I'd be willing to guess that standardized spellign and alphabetization go fairly close to hand-in-hand.

Some of the variations are completely predictable on linguistic bases, which is why Soundex pretty much ignores non-initial vowels, as they are the most likely to vary. In fact, if you listen to native English speakers with different 'accents' you'll see that much of the variation is in the pronunciation of the vowels. And the letter combinations (like p/b and t/d) that Soundex considers the same represent sounds that are the most alike.

Probably more than you wanted to know about the topic but I gotta use the MA in linguistics somehow

BJ
who still often has to spell her last name multiple times per week, even though the sound-letter correspondence for the name is quite good -- and I'm guessing everyone here not named Smith or Johnson has spell their names fairlty frequently as well .......

[SarahND]

Probably more than you wanted to know about the topic but I gotta use the MA in linguistics somehow

Thought I recognized someone who had had a course in phonetics
[rIgardz]
Sarah

[sheilajim]

Hi All

Thank you all. I think that I have just knocked down another brick wall. I will put them in my tree as probables.

I just realized that my mother and her sisters and brother for no reason that I can think of started spelling their own names "MacDonald" instead of McDonald, which was the way their father and grandfather spelled it.

Sheila