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31st August 2004, 09:07
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Hello
I've never heard or seen the spelling you have as your surname - however, that it not to say it doesn't exist in Scotland, merely that I have no knowledge of such a name. Your name is quite close to a well-known Scots name, though.... Raeburn. Which may or may not be claimed as a sept by Boyd (depending on which books you choose to believe!) It is worthwhile remembering that not every Scottish name was once part of a clan - main or sept.... Many lowland names were never part of the clan system. This does notmean that people with those names are any less scots, just that they don't have a 'clan' history, as such! Here is some information taken from http://www.electricscotland about Scots surnames - Raeburn is mentioned as being a place name. ElectricScotland is a good Scottish owned site, another one which might give you information is http://www.rampantscotland.com Good luck with your researach  What's in a Name By Tony Reid -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For many "exiled Scots" the only link with their home country is their name, so its understandable that they attract great importance to it. Electric Scotland enthusiasts might therefore be interested to discover the origins and meanings of such names. SURNAMES Compared with forenames (in our current multi-ethnic society the term "christian" names is no longer PC), surnames are of comparatively recent origin. If you go back about 500 years, most people lived in small rural communities without any need of formal identification. Slowly thereafter, forenames were not enough so they began to use surnames to differentiate them from their neighbours. There are four main sources: Patronymics Places Occupations Nicknames In a sense, it could be regarded as sexist to be preoccupied with our names. After all, we have two parents, four grandparents and, if one goes back, say, six generations, 64 direct ancestors possibly all with different names. What’s so special about the male line? The Spanish don’t think that way! Patronymics These simply describe a name derived from the name of a father or ancestor. Such names occur throughout the Western World, as exemplified by Johnson, O’Reilly and Ivanovich. In Scotland, in contrast to England, it is not uncommon for patronymics to omit the son, in examples such as Thom, Watt, Dick, Donald, Ewing (from Ewan), Gibb (from Gilbert) and Hendry. The Gaelic prefix Mac can be a great source of confusion. On the one hand it means "son of" which would suggest that anyone named, say, MacKenzie or MacDonald is directly descended from some forebear named Kenzie or Donald. This is clearly ridiculous bearing in mind that virtually all Macs are descended from people who just happened to live in an area controlled by a particular clan chief. As regional domination changed with time so often did the names of the inhabitants. The commercial importance of tartans, arising from the Highland romanticism led by Sir Walter Scott, has much to answer for in terms of the mis-information about the locational importance of Scottish surnames. To take just one example, Reid, which is a variation of the colour red, is really based on nicknames given to those with red hair or a ruddy complexion. On the basis that one of the early chiefs of Clan Donnachaich was a certain "Red" Roberston, all "Reids" are now erroneously linked with the above Clan and, therefore, with the Clan lands in and around Bruar in Perthshire. Places Some place names refer to a specific town or village. It is likely that families didn’t acquire these names until they migrated from them. After all there would be little benefit in all the residents of a village having the same name! All of the following are likely to be linked to the towns, villages or river of the same place: Abercrombie Kelvin Abernethy Kirkpatrick Anstruther Lauder Ballantyne Liddell Buchan Livingstone Dunlop Pinkerton Galloway Powrie Gordon Presley Hamilton Raeburn Heriot Rutherford Houston Selkirk there names have their origins in the location of the family within a parish. These include: Barr (Gaelic "hilltop") Boswell (French "bois" and "ville") Brownlie ("brown meadow") Burns ("stream") Cluny (Gaelic "dweller in the meadow") Craig ("cliff" or "crag") Dallas (Gaelic "waterfall") Dundas (Gaelic "South hill") Haig ("hedge") Innes (Gaelic "island dweller") Kirk ("church") Laidlaw (Gaelic "waterway") Law ("hill") Logan (Gaelic "bagan", "hollow") Lyle (French "l’isle", "island") Muir ("moor") A note on spelling variations There is a long established belief that, in the 18th Century, Scottish education was far superior to that in England. This was, to a degree, the result of John Knox’s teachings and of the Presbyterian movement generally, which led to their being "a school in every parish". By the mid 19th Century, this advantage had disappeared, partly due to migration to the larger towns where there were inadequate educational facilities, and partly due to there being no compulsion for parents to send their children to school. Because of this, many Scots at this time were illiterate as evidenced by the use of X marks, instead of signatures, on the statutory birth, marriage and death certificates. This led, inevitably, to both forenames and surnames being spelt in different ways by either the Kirk Session Clerk (usually the parish schoolmaster) pre 1855, or the local Registrar subsequently. Understandably, the incidence of spelling variants was particularly high in Gaelic-speaking areas. The problem of spelling variants was of course compounded when families emigrated, particularly to America where the officials at Ellis Island, for example, would simply write the name phonetically. 
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