Naming Patterns

Guthrie Genealogy Tidbits

Scottish Naming Patterns

A Useful Clue—But Never Proof of a Relationship

Scottish families often reused the names of parents, grandparents, siblings, and other relatives. A familiar naming pattern can suggest where to look next, but real families did not always follow it—and surviving records may not preserve every child.

Think hypothesis, not pedigree. A naming pattern can help you generate candidates for unidentified parents or grandparents. It should never be used by itself to assign a relationship in a family tree.

The Traditional Scottish Naming Pattern

Scotland’s People describes the commonly cited pattern as a simple six-position sequence. Some families followed it closely, some used parts of it, and others ignored it.

Sons

1st son Named after the father’s father — the paternal grandfather.
2nd son Named after the mother’s father — the maternal grandfather.
3rd son Named after the father.

Daughters

1st daughter Named after the mother’s mother — the maternal grandmother.
2nd daughter Named after the father’s mother — the paternal grandmother.
3rd daughter Named after the mother.
Traditional Scottish Naming Patterns graphic showing the familiar naming sequence for the first sons and daughters.
Traditional Scottish Naming Patterns — a visual guide to the commonly cited first-three-sons and first-three-daughters sequence.
What about later children? Later sons and daughters might be named for siblings of the parents, more distant relatives, deceased family members, ministers, midwives, employers, friends, or other influential people. There was no single extended sequence that every Scottish family followed.
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Use the Pattern to Generate Clues

The greatest value of a naming pattern is not that it tells you who the grandparents were, but that it gives you names to test.

Predict a Candidate

If the eldest son was William and the second son Robert, those names may suggest possible paternal and maternal grandfathers.

Test Against Records

Search baptisms, marriages, testaments, kirk-session material, census records, land records, and other sources for parents or grandparents bearing those names.

Compare the Whole Family

One matching name means little. A pattern across several children, combined with documentary evidence, can make a hypothesis more useful.

Do not work backward from the pattern as though it were a record. “The first son was John, therefore the paternal grandfather was John” is a research hypothesis—not a genealogical conclusion.
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A Real Guthrie Family Example

Guthrie Family Group 2A — Branch A: James Guthrie and Elizabeth (MNU) are the earliest identified couple in this example. Their known children were James, Robert, Mary, Martha, Ann, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Jean. James’s parents and Elizabeth’s maiden name remain unidentified. Big-Y evidence has suggested John Guthrie and Jane Stuart as possible grandparents in the deeper paternal line, but that possibility remains a research hypothesis rather than proved parentage.

Two sons of James Guthrie and Elizabeth married sisters—daughters of Andrew Smith and Elizabeth Kerr. That gives us two closely related households in which to test the naming-pattern idea rather than merely repeating the rule in the abstract.

James Guthrie + Jeane / Jane Smith

Their first son was James, matching the name of the child’s paternal grandfather. After that, the familiar three-son sequence does not continue neatly.

Children: James, David, Robert, Elizabeth, Sarah, Joseph, William H., Andrew H., Eunice Jane, Anna Martha, Lorena Lucinda.

Robert Guthrie + Mary Smith

Their first three sons provide a particularly striking fit: James Smith Guthrie reflects paternal grandfather James Guthrie; Andrew Harvey Guthrie reflects maternal grandfather Andrew Smith; and Robert Wesley Guthrie carries his father’s name.

Children: Anna, James Smith, Andrew Harvey, Robert Wesley, Eli, Elizabeth, Sarah, Mary Harriet, Jane, Allen Washington, Nancy Kerr.
Naming Patterns: A Real Family Example graphic comparing two related Guthrie and Smith households.
Naming Patterns — A Real Family Example: two related Guthrie–Smith households show why the custom is useful as a clue but unreliable as a rigid formula.
The comparison is the point. One household shows only a partial fit while the other has a very strong first-three-sons sequence. The custom can be visible within a family without behaving like an inflexible rule in every branch or every generation.
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Why the Pattern Can Break

Even a family that generally followed naming customs may appear not to do so when part of the family is missing from the surviving record.

A Child Died Young

Parents sometimes reused the name of a child who had died. A later child carrying the same name can make the birth order look misleading.

A Baptism Was Not Recorded

Old Parish Registers are not complete. A missing baptism can shift every apparent “first,” “second,” or “third” child in your reconstruction.

Two Relatives Shared a Name

If both grandfathers were James—or both grandmothers Margaret—the expected sequence may collapse into repeated or altered choices.

Someone Else Was Honored

A child might be named for a minister, midwife, employer, patron, friend, sibling, or another relative rather than the person predicted by the familiar pattern.

Family Circumstances Changed

Remarriage, illegitimacy, stepfamilies, migration, or the death of a close relative could influence the choice of a child’s name.

The Family Simply Chose Differently

Naming customs were customs—not laws. Some families followed them loosely or not at all.

Before declaring that a pattern fails, make sure you have found all of the children. Gaps between known births deserve another search of the parish registers, burial records, monumental inscriptions, and neighboring parishes.
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The Same Name May Not Look the Same

Scotland’s People cautions that forenames in historical records can appear as abbreviations, pet names, alternate spellings, or interchangeable forms. A naming pattern can therefore be present even when two records do not spell or express the forename identically.

William Wm., Willm., Will, Willie
Margaret Margt., Mgt., Maggie, Meg, Peggy
Alexander Alexr., Alex, Alec, Sandy, Eck
Janet / Jane / Jean / Jessie These names can overlap or appear interchangeably in Scottish records, depending on place, period, and individual usage.
Search by identity, not only exact spelling. If a family repeatedly uses “Jean” and a later record says “Jane,” investigate whether the records concern the same person before creating two individuals in the tree.
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What Does the Research Say?

A Traditional Pattern Existed—but It Was Not Universal

Scotland’s People describes the familiar six-position naming pattern as a useful genealogical convention while warning that some families followed it strictly, some only partly, and others not at all.

Academic research at the University of Glasgow has gone further. A study of eighteenth-century baptismal records in four Scottish parishes found that the supposed fixed sequence was not followed by the majority of the families studied. That does not make naming patterns useless; it means they should be treated as one clue among many rather than as a rule capable of reconstructing a pedigree.

Guthrie Genealogy research standard: Naming patterns may support a hypothesis, suggest an unidentified relative, or help distinguish candidate families. They should not be cited as proof of parentage without documentary or genetic evidence.
Sources & Further Reading:
Scotland’s People — Forenames and Naming Patterns in Scotland
Alice Crook — An Overview of Personal Naming Practices in Scotland, 1680–1840
University of Glasgow — Personal Naming Patterns in Scotland, 1700–1800
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Let the Names Point the Way—Then Find the Evidence

Scottish naming customs can be remarkably helpful when a family is difficult to untangle, but the names are clues rather than conclusions. Build the hypothesis, search for the missing records, compare the whole family, and let the evidence determine whether the pattern was really operating in your ancestor’s household.