SIB FOLK NEWS - Orkney Family History Society

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NEWSLETTER OF THE ORKNEY FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY Issue No. 47 September 2008
WHAT’S IN
A PLACE NAME ?
Concentrated in its small geographical area, Orkney has
a particularly rich and varied history of place names. Interest
in the subject increases with time as people try to
understand something of the meaning that place names
convey about the lay of the land and who owned it, what
it was used for, how it was divided up and developed,
changes that took place over the centuries and all that
still goes on.
When family groups stayed a long time in one place, lasting
centuries in some cases, they became closely linked to
their environment to the extent that the family took the
name of the land; thus the old area of Delday in Deerness
gave the surname Delday; similarily the Skeaton district
in Deerness has its continuity in the surname Skea. Both
of these are good old Orcadian surnames to this day.
It may be that before populations increased and surnames
became essential, an older form of identification
was used, and not only in Orkney. The first name of an
adult man was followed my his place-name, usually the
portion of land where he lived, and the two names were
linked by o’ for short. So everyone would know where John
o’ Grind, Davie o’ Fea, Robbie o’ Holland all belonged to in
a parish. When there was little movement of people from
outwith a parish, or indeed within it, there was no need
for surnames.
Fast-track now to the late 20th century – the troubles
in Northern Ireland are in full swing and an Irishman
brings his family safely to Orkney for security. In time he
gets to know the County and some of its native people and
expresses surprise to an Orcadian that so many Irish are
living in Orkney. The Orcadian is equally surprised and
asks how he has come to this conclusion. ‘Well’ says the
Iriishman,’there is John o’ Newark, Billy o’ Donesquoy,
Tam o’ Vestlebanks’. In the next few minutes of conversation
all the ‘resident Irish’ were changed irrefutably into
indigenous Orcadians.
It is also said that a touch of class distinction was practised.
If the head man of a family was both the occupier
and proprietor of his land, the the word ‘of’ was used instead
of the abbreviation o’, hence Alfred of Braebister.
While static populations gave rise to certain family, and
place names, the opposite is true. The largest early influx
came with the Norse in the Viking Age with long-lasting
effects, effects that fascinate people to this day. Then
came the Scots and others, among them the mapmakers
who Scotticised / Anglicised wonderfully descriptive and
meaningful Old Norse names, leading us nowadays to
have to delve into the past to appreciate their true mean-
By Edna S. Panton. Member No 1094
ing. We are fortunate to have William Thomson’s recent
book on the subject to fill the gap.
Within living memory Orkney has had its fair share
of population upheaval during the Second World War
and for the previous generation, the First World War.
The story which follows is a very small instance of how
a combination of people, circumstance and environment
can result in a place-name carrying a depth of history
behind it.
Visualise a tiny triangular patch of land, wet and
marshy, where buttercups grow, which is such poor ground
that it has never been cultivated. As such it has always
been known as the ‘Myrrin’ belonging to Grind in the
south-end of Deerness. Then came the First World War;
a local man, James Sutherland, fought in the trenches in
France and suffered the effects of gas. He was sent to a
hospital in Leeds where he met a local girl, married and
brought her back to Deerness. In the 1920s he built a
small home on the ‘Myrrin’, and named it ‘Armlea Cottage’
after a district in Leeds, and everyone understood
the reason for the attractive namer. Several occupancies
later, Dr William Emslie bought the cottage for his
family’s use at weekends and in the summertime. Both
he and his wife belonged to Aberdeen and they renamed
it ‘Persleyden’ which was and is a lovely area by the city
and River Don. Once again a name had been taken from
the original area of the owners and one that they liked.
In the 1960s Agnes J. Petrie of Stonehall, Deerness,
retired from the farm after over 40 years of life there.
She bought Persleyden for her retirement home and had
21 years in it. During that time she toyed with the idea
of changing the name on the basis that it had no Orkney
connections and that she, an Orcadian born and bred,
wished to have one with more local meaning. She was
supported in this by my late husband, Norman A Panton,
himself an Aberdonian, but who felt quite strongly
about it. The onus fell on me to come up with a suitable
name, one that would last, with hints of Old Norse
if possible. The obvious was to call it ‘The Myrrin’, but
on thinking on its interpretation, wet boggy and marshy
ground, the answer was ‘No’. A natural spring would
have given us the name ‘Keldur’, Old Norse for spring
but that was rejected as a hard-sounding name. We also
considered Old Norse names surrounding the shoreline
of ‘Stonehall’; ‘Taracliff’, ‘Myzgar’, ‘Mahon’s’ and Rattans
Gates’. ‘Dingeshowie’ and the field name ‘Suli’ were also
possibles but the field of ‘Suli’ is in use to this day and
we could not have kye being sent to the cottage insteadA