Quote Originally Posted by sirdaniel1975 View Post
What the clan societies are doing is adding nearly every popular variant spelling of names.
I Just couldn't pass this one up! A century or so ago when I was starting to trace my Father's lineage, the local library offered a free course in genealogy. The first thing the instructor said was "Always remember. Spelling doesn't matter. If it sounds something like the name, it most likely is!" Since all Scots, at one time at least, spoke a form of Gaelic, the names, as we know them are transliterations into a foreign tongue (English). In addition, some gaels, upon coming to America, quite literally translated their names into English. "McShane"became "Johnson", to give just one example I am familiar with. This what is happening here as we find more and more anglicized variants of the old names.