Surname: Scott in Ireland

Welcome to the group. Many of the posters here are very knowledgeable, extremely helpful and friendly, but we do not ‘do’ presumptions because they invariably are incorrect. Nor are claims based on presumptions well received by anyone with any knowledge of Ireland’s history.

For starters the gallowglass certainly were not ‘strictly Roman Catholic’ as you assert because they predate the Reformation and Martin Luther (born 1487). If they had a religion, they might have been Christian or pagans who had a Norse deity, but Roman Catholic they were not.

The Mr. Scot you mention could have been a descendant of any number of Scott families who arrived over the years or he could have been a migratory peddler recently arrived in Ireland from London. You need to do the work, or pay someone reputable to do it for you. It’s great fun to do it yourself and we will help you on this forum if you get stuck.

In researching your genealogy you should forget the hype and fairy-tales that sometimes surround a family’s history and start with the basic truths – i.e. the births, marriages and deaths of your parents, their parents, etc., and work all the way back to the Scott - Kelly marriage. You are lucky that they went to the US as the records for the period you need to research are very good. Start with the ‘sticky’ at the top of this forum page - Introduction to Genealogy in the United States of America.
Good luck with the research.:)

General comment - Although I disagree with MacLysaght on a number of issues, I agree with him on ‘clans’. On more than a few occasions he repeated that he disliked and avoided the term ‘clan’ in an Irish context, because it incorrectly suggested that a clan system (akin to Scotland’s) existed in Ireland. Instead he invariably used ‘sept’.

Specific comment – I agree that any person named ‘Scott’ arrived in Ireland with that surname. However. I disagree with the assertion that “Gaelic culture was an early adopter of the surname, much earlier than Anglo culture” because that is much too general. By the 1100’s occupational surnames were becoming quite common in England, e.g. John Smith, Ralph Tailor, Will Potter, etc., whereas most Irish used patronymics, which changed every generation and use of surnames (sept names) per se was a later arrival. Even the newly-arrived/ early Irish Normans used patronymics.

By the Reformation the use of O’ and Mac surnames for septs was becoming more widespread particularly by the ‘nobles’ e.g. ‘The McCarthy Mor” or “The Fox” or “The O’Donoghue”. Even as late as c1600, Spenser wrote quite virulently that he wished the use of O’ and Mc by the heads of the septs be banned (because he saw it as a means of them retaining/developing power). Mc Lysaght also states that use of surnames was not universal in Ireland by 1600, particularly by the ‘lower orders’.

Use of surnames in Ireland was so uncommon that a statute was brought in at Dublin in the mid 1400’s (Edward IV) requiring the Irish living in the Pale to take a surname.

The assertion on the ‘antiquity’ of Irish surnames usually arises from an incorrect claim that Brian Boru issued an edict that they should be used. (The claim that O’ and Mc were banned by the English is equally false.)

dubhthach wrote: »

The antiquity of Irish surnames, .............etc ....I wouldn't bother much with Spenser, though I do think it would be nice if I as an Irishman could turn into a Wolf once a year

Forget about the therianthropy , this forum would hate to see you with a price on your head!:eek:

Poor old Spenser – in his story the words he placed in the mouth of Irenius were from Geraldus Cambrensis, not his own assertion. That wolf also was an allusive link to the Scythians, in an effort to link the Irish to Scythian barbarity. Little did he think when writing Eudoxus he would have to flee from Hugh O’Neill, would die in penury in London and that his great grandson would be dispossessed by the Cromwellians.

Cleireach was born in 820, and while McLysaght contends it was an early surname he also states it was two centuries before hereditary surnames began to be used. Were Brian Boru to have had a surname it could have been Kennedy – a Dalcassian, he was a son of Cennedig, and it was Brian’s nephew who ‘founded’ the O’Kennedy’s (although some of them are of Scottish descent). The 1100’s is the era I’d suggest when hereditary surnames began to become more frequent in many European countries including Ireland. I’m not sure that the Cleary surname is a great basis for arguing the general antiquity of all Irish surnames also as we have no idea how many O’Cleary’s are descended from Cleireach, just as we do not know how many of them anglicized the name to Clark/Clerk/Clarke. Or how many others later (under Edward) ‘took’ the surname Clark. Or, FWIW, how many Norman ‘de Clare’s’ changed to Clery and Cleare?

McLysaght and others disliked use of ‘Clan’ – not really because of the Scottish mania (he was writing long after the Ossian/Victoria/Balmoral/tartan nonsense had been recognized) but because it was misleading. O’Donovan preferred the use of ‘tribe’ although Eoghan Mac Neill disliked that because he maintained it too was misleading. It’s years since I read it, but if my memory is correct Nicholls adopted/instigated the ‘corporate clan’ concept in that book as a means of differentiating the ‘family unit’ within a greater body as he wanted to use the concept particularly with regard to explaining Brehon legal and ‘chiefly’ control of an extended unit within a specific territory (and it included dwellers in the territory, not just the derbfine). Also, in some cases the tribe-name became the surname, but not always.

IMO ‘clan’ is too inaccurate a concept to use for a specific / isolated name family in Ireland. The meaning of Clann in Irish genealogy is quite different to its use in Scottish ancestry – it is too general, not specific – e.g. the Clann Daly would also include the O’Donnells, and to use your own reference to Brian Boru, his line was from the Dalcassian clan (I use ‘clan’ because it is all-encompassing, not specific) Ui Toirdealbhaigh and from him there are (from about 1050) the various O’Brien families throughout Munster, the O’Kennedy’s and also some of the McMahons who descend from Murtagh Mor O’Brien, so ‘sept’ would be better than ‘clan’ to segregate the various families / lines of descent.

The main thrust of my posts was/is an effort to limit the ‘diddley idlely’ and usually historically false aspect that commercialism (now sometimes state-aided) is introducing to Irish genealogy, with ‘Clan rallys’, ‘family crests’, so –called ‘descent parchments’ and the increasingly common ‘Irish Clan Tartan’.

The word Scotus / Scoti is not Gaelic, it is Latin (and its etymology is undecided, with several hypotheses being put forward). It was not a name ‘taken’ by mendicant preachers. It was a name given to the Irish in the era of Roman Britain.

When the Scotii moved across the water their name was given to the land they inhabited, just as the Belgae gave their name to Belgium and the Helvetii to Helvetia (Switzerland).

After the deaths of those early Irish saints ‘Scotus’ began to be used as a suffix by later commentators, to indicate a person’s Irish origin. Similarly the historian Gerald (of Wales) did not AFAIK go around calling himself ‘Geraldus Cambrensis”, that simply was how people later referred to him.

Protestants marrying Catholics and switching ‘sides’ was a very frequent occurrence and even was a problem in Cromwell’s day. My family was staunchly Protestant yet by the early 1800’s most of them were RC, the earliest convert being born in the early 1700’s. As Pinky said, assume nothing. Start in this era and work back, otherwise ‘genealogically-speaking’ your results will not be productive.