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Archiver > MIDLOTHIAN > 2007-06 > 1181483267


From: "Duncan Smith" <>
Subject: [MIDLOTHIAN] Recording Name Variations
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:47:47 +0100


I seem to recall that this thread evolved from a message about the different ways of writing names on marriage registers back in the 1770's.

While more recent listings appear to have concentrated on literacy levels in Scotland and the rest of the UK, I think it is useful to distinguish between the two subjects when it comes to recording our family history.

The 2 key education acts for Scotland & England (the ones that made education compulsory for the fives and over) came in 1872 (Scotland) and 1880 (England). Before that, as fionnghal has said ... "Amongst the poorer, it was more important to have more earners to help fill hungry mouths so education was scant and employment at a very young age common". Although here in Scotland we have a fine education system, before we get too smug about things, it is worth recalling that in 2001 the Scottish Executive published details of a study which found that 800,000 of adults in Scotland still have very low levels of literacy & numeracy.

Getting back to the family history aspects of all this. It is probably true that the ability of our ancestors to sign their name on a marriage register did not necessarily mean that they could write very much more than that, or indeed read anything at all. I would like to think that my Midlothian ancestors could all read & write as far back as the 1770's, but I somehow doubt it. Even if they could, the spelling variants one finds in the registers of those times, suggests that standardisation of names was still quite a while away.

As an example, my paternal ROSS line were mostly Coal Hewers in & around Lasswade during the 18th century. While looking at the Lasswade OPRs quite recently, I noticed that although the name ROSS had relatively few variants (just ROSSE or ROSS in the main) another name that I was interested in, STRATTON (on my maternal line), was spelled in a wide variety of ways, even within the same family. One single baptismal entry, for instance, shows the family name spelled as STRATON, STRATOUN & STRAITOUN.

No wonder research isn't always easy.

Duncan, Dundee

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