Whimsy: mapping the origin of
an ancestor using given forenames
John McEwan
19th July 2005
Those of Scottish origin know that forenames are typically passed from
generation to generation. The eldest born son is normally given the name of the
grandfather, second son the name of the maternal grandfather, third son the
name of the father, 4th fathers oldest brother, 5th the
mothers oldest brother and so on.
Given that the both parents also often came from similar locations, it
is not surprising that rather few forenames tended to be used within a region.
Those who have tracked ancestors through births, deaths, marriages and census
records are often astounded by the confusing forest of identical first names.
While regional patterns of first names are known to exist, just how
definitive are they for Scots ancestors? As pure whimsy an experiment (with a sample
size of one) was undertaken using my patrilineal
ancestors who came from Islay.
Generation 1 Donald
Generation 2 Archibald
(? Son)
Generation 3 Neil (6th
son)
Generation 4 Robert
Ferguson (2nd son)
Generation 5 Colin Campbell (2nd
son)
To plot the distribution of forenames I used 1881 Surname Atlas available
from www.archersoftware.co.uk
Fig 1. Map for Donald and
Archibald
as a forename with numbers by county
Fig 2. Map for Neil
and
Robert
as a forename in 1881 with numbers by county
Fig 3. Map for Ferguson
and Colin
as a forename in 1881 with numbers by county
Fig 4. Map for Campbell as a forename in 1881 with
numbers by county
The first obvious characteristic is the highest density locations
cluster around Scotland and are greatest in this region for 6 of 7 forenames.
The second is the names initially seem most common in Argyllshire
in the first 3 generations. Perhaps not surprisingly all these ancestors were
born in that region! The last two generations appear to cluster around
Lanarkshire particularly for the second name. Again not surprisingly, the 4th
generation was born in Lanarkshire and his mother came from that region. The
final 5th generation was born in New Zealand, but in a region
settled predominantly by Scots and Irish. My own name (not plotted or given)
follows a similar localization in the second name.
In summary, no claims are made in this admittedly non-scientific
evaluation, but I am impressed at how good this method is at predicting
ancestral origin.