Cowie & Murcar

[DavidWW]

Thanks for that, this brings in another query I had. I have as you can imagine a large list of linked surnames. My background is 100% Scots or Ulster Scots my fathers side from Aberdeenshire my mothers from Lanarkshire yet I have absolutely no Macs (or Mcs). The wikipedia site you linked to confirms that Mac is gaelic, so I again question the influence the gaelic in North East Scotland or had by the 13th or 14th century when surnames began to be used gaelic had declined however remnants of Gaelic place names still existed?

Not only Gaelic, but Pictish (there's ongoing debate amongst academics as to whether the Pictish language was related), Scandinavian, and Germanic (which includes the Low Countries, i.e. the historical antecedents of modern day Belgium and The Netherlands), never mind earlier influences from the award of land to Normans and Flemish in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Just to confuse matters, it's far from uncommon, all over Scotland, to find that a placename combines elements from more than one language

BTW, the great majority Ulster Scots or, as they are also known, Scotch Irish, were Lowland Scots, hence the relative lack of Mac, Mc, or M'c, Mhic, or Vic

David

[LesleyB]

Hi Andrew
I found a map here:
http://home.regent.edu/ruthven/clanmap.html
and there is a different map here:
http://www.burkes-peerage.net/sites/sco ... mindex.asp
- both give a version of the distribution of some clan names. As with many of these things it can only give a vague idea of name distribution, and can only cover a limited number of names, but what it does illustrate to some extent is an idea of the concentration of Mac/Mc names in the western and highland areas - remember that although it is in the north, Aberdeen is still a lowland area!

Best wishes
Lesley