De-Anglicisation of Names

[gilmore]

What fun! I have "Roberts" and "Miller" on my father's side. I am told Roberts is Scottish, but dunno think so. There is a Roberts tartan, but it is Welsh.

Surname Profiler indeed shows Roberts as Welsh, especially in North Wales. Miller is in the south and east of England, but is more common in central Scotland. It could have come from the German, Mueller, as often happened in the US.

There really is no substitute for the hard work of tracing one's ancestors backward in time via the paper trail, documenting them well one generation at a time, with one exception: DNA testing, which can sometimes be helpful.

[Ivy]

Surname profiler http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/default.aspx shows it mostly in a small area in the north of England around Harrowgate and north of Liverpool, and in Cornwall.

Yeah, I was already aware (through genealogical research) that Ivy hails from that area. What I was referring to was the etymology of the name. Some sources claim "son of Ive", but I have seen referenced to the possibility of it being a place name or simply referring to the plant. Mostly I find this thread really fun to follow, and I think that the transliterations are really interesting, even though they have no relation to the name being Gaelic in origin. Sorry if I was unclear before.

Ralston is a Scottish place name: Ralph, one of the descendants of Mac Duff, Thane of Fife, obtained a grant of land in Renfrewshire (bordering onto the eastern edge of the town of Paisley), and, as was common in those days, called he place after himself, Ralphstown, which was softened into Ralston.

[jrmiller]

Thanks very much, I will have to look for that Miller tartan!

[slohairt]

Ok, great stuff. What about Byers? Closet I've gotten is Birse. Just for fun lets go for Bruce Richard as well. FYI Birse or Byers is a Sept of Lindsay.

BIRSE Birse is topographical and from a village in the northeast of Scotland. It was originally recorded as Bras.(?)

[slohairt]

Great stuff. My Scottish ancestry comes from my Mom's side, Ralston. My last name, Ivy, is the one that gets conflicting origins though...

RALSTON Topographical from an estate near Paisley. It is derived from Ralph's toun (or settlement).

IVY Not sure at all about this one. Possibly from the plant, but it also bears some resemblance to the Irish name Iveagh (from Irish Uíbh Eachach).

[slohairt]

What fun! I have "Roberts" and "Miller" on my father's side. I am told Roberts is Scottish, but dunno think so. There is a Roberts tartan, but it is Welsh.

ROBERTS Roberts IS almost always Welsh in origin. The original Welsh would be Ap Rhobert, meaning 'son of Robert'.

MILLER Since the miller was a rather important occupation in every society, it could indeed come from any language. In Scotland, I believe the spelling Millar is a bit more common.

[dowofbuchanan]

ok im back again ... ham ... my buddy seems to be welsh but may be irish ... any ideas on the who what and where ...

[Crow on the Mountain]

I have a couple for you...Peek, and Brooks.

[An t-Ileach]

Miller - a "trade name" - is muillear in Gaelic and would sound much like as it does in Scots or English, so Miller could well be the Anglicisation.

[arrg-isle]

Great thread indeed! This stuff is so cool!
My 5xG grampa sort of showed me how it works, archivally: He was a livestock trade-cargoer, plying a shoreline circuit from his hometown of Machrahanish, to Oban, to Port Logan, to north-coastal Wales, to Co. Antrim in Ireland, and back up around . . anyway, post-Culloden, he began quoting his name as "James Wright" instead of Hamish MacIntyre, as he'd been christened, depending on where he was trading, and/or who he was speaking to; when he quit the open water & retired to the Welsh town of Corwen, he was known to all his neighbors by the name of Wright, even though the family maintained the auld name in their home, and entered all the new children's surname as MacIntyre in the family bible. When his sons emigrated to Massachusetts 20 years later, they were registered as Wrights, dropping the original surname altogether.
Rather, what has confused my researching has been the maternal name of "Burnham"; it would seem to break down quite easily as "home by (or at) the stream", but it's oddly absent from all Scottish & most Irish roles I've found, the closest being the Scottish place name of Birnam . .
Any insight?