These Names Prove Your Family Was Scots-Irish
American Bloodlines
9,852 views
Scots-Irish families did not choose names. They inherited them, in a fixed order, according to a rule everybody knew and nobody wrote down. First son for the father's father. Second son for the mother's father. First daughter for the mother's mother. Second daughter for the father's mother.
Learn the sequence and you can run it backwards — turning a list of brothers and sisters from two hundred years ago into the names of the generation before them.
This video covers the full pattern for sons and daughters; why it existed in a kin-based society; the necronym practice, where a later child was given the name of a sibling who died (which is why you find two Margarets in one family); the distinctly Scottish and Ulster given names — Hugh, Archibald, Ninian, Agnes, Jean, Isabella — and the nickname traps that split one ancestor into two people; why a surname sitting in a first-name slot may be your missing maternal line; and three worked methods for using the pattern to identify an unknown grandparent, separate same-named cousins, and test a proposed parent.
It also covers the honest limits, including a 2012 University of Glasgow study of over 24,000 baptism records that found the pattern far less consistent than genealogists often assume.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — The Children Can Name the Parents
02:30 — Who the Scots-Irish Were
05:00 — The Pattern: Sons
07:30 — The Pattern: Daughters
10:00 — Why the Pattern Existed
13:00 — Two Children, One Name
16:00 — The Names Themselves
19:30 — Agnes, Nancy, Jean, Janet — The Nickname Traps
22:00 — Surnames Used as First Names
24:00 — How to Name a Grandparent Nobody Recorded
28:00 — What the Glasgow Study Found
31:00 — The Same-Name Problem and the FAN Principle
34:00 — What Happened to the Pattern in America
37:00 — Where to Actually Look
MORE FROM AMERICAN BLOODLINES
▶ 7 Signs Your Family Might Have Scots-Irish Blood
▶ Who Were The Scots-Irish Before America? The Story Of Ulster And The Border Reivers
▶ Is Your Family on This Scottish Clan List?
▶ These Surnames Prove Your Family Was in America Before 1700
DISCLAIMER:
The naming pattern is a convention, not a rule, and it was broken often. It produces a hypothesis, never proof — a name it hands you must be confirmed against records before it goes in your tree. A 2012 study by Alice Louise Crook at the University of Glasgow analysed over 24,000 baptism records across four Scottish parishes and found no definite proof of the pattern in consistent practice, partly because the name pool was so small that apparent matches may be coincidence. The pattern is strongest roughly from the 1600s to the early 1800s, and faded through the nineteenth century.
#ScotsIrish #UlsterScots #Genealogy #Ancestry #FamilyHistory #Appalachia #Scottish #FamilyTree #NamingPatterns #AmericanBloodlines #Presbyterian #GreatWagonRoad #Heritage #SurnameOrigins
20 Comments
Digging up those ancestral roots, can be very challenging, interesting and exhilarating. Once I broke down that brick wall, it opened up. My Ann McCoy's mother was Anne Bruce from Scotland. Yes I descend from those Bruce's. My McCoy line isn't the same ones of the McCoy/Hatfield feud. lol
These Names Prove Your Family Was Scots-Irish
American Bloodlines
9,852 views
Scots-Irish families did not choose names. They inherited them, in a fixed order, according to a rule everybody knew and nobody wrote down. First son for the father's father. Second son for the mother's father. First daughter for the mother's mother. Second daughter for the father's mother.
Learn the sequence and you can run it backwards — turning a list of brothers and sisters from two hundred years ago into the names of the generation before them.
This video covers the full pattern for sons and daughters; why it existed in a kin-based society; the necronym practice, where a later child was given the name of a sibling who died (which is why you find two Margarets in one family); the distinctly Scottish and Ulster given names — Hugh, Archibald, Ninian, Agnes, Jean, Isabella — and the nickname traps that split one ancestor into two people; why a surname sitting in a first-name slot may be your missing maternal line; and three worked methods for using the pattern to identify an unknown grandparent, separate same-named cousins, and test a proposed parent.
It also covers the honest limits, including a 2012 University of Glasgow study of over 24,000 baptism records that found the pattern far less consistent than genealogists often assume.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — The Children Can Name the Parents
02:30 — Who the Scots-Irish Were
05:00 — The Pattern: Sons
07:30 — The Pattern: Daughters
10:00 — Why the Pattern Existed
13:00 — Two Children, One Name
16:00 — The Names Themselves
19:30 — Agnes, Nancy, Jean, Janet — The Nickname Traps
22:00 — Surnames Used as First Names
24:00 — How to Name a Grandparent Nobody Recorded
28:00 — What the Glasgow Study Found
31:00 — The Same-Name Problem and the FAN Principle
34:00 — What Happened to the Pattern in America
37:00 — Where to Actually Look
MORE FROM AMERICAN BLOODLINES
▶ 7 Signs Your Family Might Have Scots-Irish Blood
▶ Who Were The Scots-Irish Before America? The Story Of Ulster And The Border Reivers
▶ Is Your Family on This Scottish Clan List?
▶ These Surnames Prove Your Family Was in America Before 1700
DISCLAIMER:
The naming pattern is a convention, not a rule, and it was broken often. It produces a hypothesis, never proof — a name it hands you must be confirmed against records before it goes in your tree. A 2012 study by Alice Louise Crook at the University of Glasgow analysed over 24,000 baptism records across four Scottish parishes and found no definite proof of the pattern in consistent practice, partly because the name pool was so small that apparent matches may be coincidence. The pattern is strongest roughly from the 1600s to the early 1800s, and faded through the nineteenth century.
#ScotsIrish #UlsterScots #Genealogy #Ancestry #FamilyHistory #Appalachia #Scottish #FamilyTree #NamingPatterns #AmericanBloodlines #Presbyterian #GreatWagonRoad #Heritage #SurnameOrigins