Scottish Name Generator

How the Scottish Name Generator works

Scottish name generator: choosing a name that fits

Scotland has two naming traditions that met in the middle. The Highlands and Islands were Gaelic-speaking into the nineteenth century, and their names are the clan names: MacLeod, MacDonald, Fraser, Cameron, MacKenzie, each Mac a son of a founding ancestor, and each one tied to a district, so that a MacLeod is from Skye or Lewis and a Cameron from Lochaber. Highland first names keep their Gaelic shapes even in English spelling, Hamish from Seumas, Morag, Eilidh, Ruaridh, Torquil from the Norse Thorketill. The Lowlands spoke Scots, a sister language of English, and their surnames are the great Border and Lothian families, Douglas, Stewart, Hamilton, Kerr, Armstrong, Elliot, with first names closer to the English stock but with Scottish favourites, Callum, Euan, Isla, Kirsty, that never crossed the border in the same numbers.

The Highland option pairs Gaelic-flavoured first names with clan surnames, and now and then adds a territorial designation, MacLeod of Skye, which is how the chiefs and gentry of the clans were and still are styled. The Lowland option gives the modern Scottish name most people in Glasgow and Edinburgh carry. The Gaelic option builds a name entirely in Scottish Gaelic: a Gaelic first name with a Mac surname for a man and a Nic surname for a woman, since Nic, from nighean mhic, daughter of the son of, is the female form and the following name lenites, or a true patronymic, Calum mac Dhòmhnaill, Eilidh nighean Iain, which is how Gaelic speakers referred to each other in a community where everyone shared the same few surnames.

The first names in every list are ones Scots actually give. Isla, Eilidh, Callum and Finlay have topped the Scottish registers for a decade, while Murdo, Farquhar, Ishbel and Fenella are the Highland names that mark a family as from the north and west.

For the rest of the United Kingdom, the British page; for Irish Gaelic names with Ó and Ní, the Irish page; for the wider Celtic family including Welsh, Cornish and Breton, the Celtic page; and for the Norse names the Hebrides took their Torquils and Somerleds from, the Viking page.

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