Scottish mumsnetters...

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I’m delving into my past a little bit, my amazing NaN who passed many years ago, I believe her parents or at least one of them was Scottish, my nans middle name was Kinloch - I realise this may be super vague, but does anyone know what the relevance of Kinloch is, where they would have hailed from?

Scottish women were often given family (sur)names as middle names. Kinloch is a surname.

No idea if there was a tradition as to whose surname they got. I’d guess mum’s maiden name but I don’t know that.

Here is a map giving details of the distribution of the name.

Can you not look up your nan's birth certificate to get more info?

I have no idea where to start with doing a family tree

Kinloch sometimes means 'keeper of the lake'. There are several places with Kinloch in them - Kinlochmoidart, Kinlochbervie, Kinlochewe etc. They are often at the head of a loch where the river runs into it.

Yes, my mum has a very Scottish family name as a middle name. I believe it was quite common.

My husband found out he was adopted and I did him a family tree. I'm no expert, i just joined one of the ancestry websites for free for a month and started exploring. Start with your nan's name, you will be able to find the censuses over the years with her addresses and birth/death/marriage certificates and then her parents and so on back. I ended up quite far back. It was fascinating.

Another Scot here - yes, mother's (or grandmothers) maiden name quite common as a surname. DS has mine! My mum has what I think is a family name for her middle name, though not quite sure if she knows the origins - I must ask her!

*as a middle name, not a surname obviously!

Omg, just realised (age 47) that my mum has her gran’s surname as middle name. Didn’t realise because it’s a fairly common girl’s name too (which my DD has as a middle name).

There’s lots of ancestry type websites and databases.

Giving children their mother's maiden name as a middle name is pretty common in Scottish family trees I've found. In big families it tended to be Mum's maiden name, then the Gran's maiden names, then other family surnames as middle names.

Scotlandspeople.com has listings of all scottish births, deaths and marriages, plus censuses. You have to pay to order certificates, or to see older certificates, online, but you can search the listings

It makes Scottish searching much, much easier than using ancestry for other searches. I've used it extensively for 5/6 years now so any questions just give me a shout.

Scotlandspeople.com seems to be out of use now. I tried .co.uk too but that’s not in use either

You aren’t able to get any copies of certificates at the moment due to Covid-19.

@Twospaniels sorry it’s Scotlandspeople.gov.uk

Brain fade moment there

@Nicolastuffedone If you get far enough back you can download (not official for use) copies from the website using credits. You can also view the censuses using credits as well.

@lyralalala thank you. Got it now.

It just dawned on me as well that 2 of my children, the boys funnily enough, have family names as their middle names. But my daughters have first names. I hadn't quite planned it to be like that.
My two boys have each a surname of my husbands. One his adopted mother's middle name (which is her grandmothers family name) and the younger son has my husband's birth mother's maiden name. We felt it honoured both of his families.

Which means that both our Scottish mother's have surnames as middle names

Does anyone know of its common in other countries?

In a lot of places mother’s maiden name is used as part of the surname. I think Spain and Portugal both do it.

From wiki
Currently in Spain, people bear a single or composite given name (nombre in Spanish) and two surnames (apellidos in Spanish). ... Traditionally, a person's first surname is the father's first surname (apellido paterno), while their second surname is the mother's first surname (apellido materno).

My husband has his mother’s maiden name as his middle name. Coincidentally it is a fairly common first name too.

There is a traditional - at least for past 200 years or so - pattern of naming children:
*Oldest son often given father's father's first name, maybe with mother's maiden name as middle name.
*Second son sometimes given mother's maiden name as first name.
*Daughters quite often given mother's maiden name as middle name.

• Where inheritance or social status was important, sons or daughters might be given surnames as first names or second names to 'compliment' a hoped-for benefactor, and/or to display links with high-ranking or influential families.

Traditionally, Scottish women did not take their husband's surname when they married - though this pattern changed in the 19th cent.

Kinloch literally means 'head of the loch' - usually, the end of the loch where it flows into a river or the sea.
It's a place name and - as others have said - a surname.

Ancestry.co.uk has helpful features on (eg) how to compile a family tree but does not give access to all records about Scottish families, unless your ancestors had moved out of Scotland.
Again, as others have said, you need to go to Scotland's People www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

In the above, I should have said 'traditional Scottish pattern'. Sorry.

The best thing about Scottish certificates is that the mothers full name is always on them. It makes going back that next step so much easier.

Also if you find your Scottish tree doesn’t follow @florascotia’s traditional pattern then try searching for a child who died young. If the 3rd or 4th son, for example, is the one named after the paternal grandfather then its likely there was a first son named that who died. Surprisingly to me when I started it was very common to use the name again if your child died, effectively naming the child after their sibling and the grandparent.
Often they were given a different middle name which helps differentiate.