THE MACNAUCHTAN SAGAby V.V. McNitt
1. Beginning with the Word Nig
To DISCOVER the origin of the surname of the Clan MacNauchtan we go far back into antiquity. The key lies in one small word of three letters: the Celtic root word nig. All authorities agree on this, and on the meaning of the word: to wash, to be clean. From nig came the old Pictish or Caledonian name-word necht, which means a pledge, or a clean person suitable to be given as a hostage.
From necht came the proper name Nechtan, which evolved through centuries into Nauchtan. Then came MacNauchtan, and a long series of variants: MacNaughtan, MacNaughton, Macnaghten, McNaughton, McNaught, McKnight, McNeight, McNutt, McNitt, and McNett. Add mentally to the abbreviated and corrupted forms about two score other surnames not to be listed here, and you will have a quick view, of the lush growth from the little seed nig, over a period of sixteen or eighteen centuries.
It was common in ancient Caledonia in the early days of the Christian era for rival clans to give hostages to bind agreements to keep the peace and stop raiding each other’s herds. A necht or hostage was likely to be a clean-hearted or knightly youth whose tribe would wish his ultimate return, and for whose safety it was worth while to practice restraint. It meant something to be clean in the dirty days of antiquity, when somebody in our past got himself named for what may have seemed a peculiarity.
The Celts often attached a diminutive suffix to the end of a name to indicate affection. A very early suffix was -an, meaning little. So a pledge or hostage to whom the name Necht adhered, became Nechtan or Little Pledge when the diminutive ending was added to his name. In later times the suffix -ie came into general use instead, and Scottish surnames show how through affection of parents and friends we came to have so many like Blackie, Dickie or Dickey, and Richie or Rickey. This use of the diminutive form continues today when we call children Jeanie, Robbie, Jamie, and Sandy. For a supposedly stem people, the Scots have betrayed in their name-forms a singular capacity for affection.
Families in Scotland didn’t have established surnames until the latter half of the eleventh century, when King Malcolm Canmore encouraged his people to accept a practice already begun in some other countries. Even then only a beginning was made. Before that time, a man or boy was referred to as the son of his father. Thus Niel, son of William, was call Niel mac William. Niel’s son Robert was apt to be known as Robert mac Nicl. And so on, until Malcolm Canmore halted the procession and asked all hands to keep and pass along the names they were wearing. That is when MacNiel and MacNauchtan became fixed surnames. Often a "given" or Christian name persisted in a family and became the basis of the surname ultimately adopted, without the use of the patronymic "Mac." Alexander is a good example. Men also took names from the places where they lived, and from their trades or occupations. Here are some examples of Scottish names: Galloway, Muir or Moor.’Craig, Weaver, Webster, Miller, Baxter (baker), Lorimer (harness-maker), and Wright (carpenter). Colors were drawn upon too for such names as Black, White, Brown, and Reid (red). But never Yellow.
The royal Stewarts took their surname from the office of Walter Fitzalan as Steward or manager of finances for King Robert Bruce. The variants Stuart and Steuart date from Mary of Scotland, who spent girlhood years in France. She spelled her name Stuart because the letter w was not used in France. Some think the French form has more tone. It has been adopted by many not related to the royal line.
Dr. Black says many imagine all persons with the surname Stewart or its French variants are of royal descent, and cautions that there were stewards and stewards in Scotland besides Walter Fitzalan. Every bishop and Earl had a steward, and the descendants of such stewards wear the surname Stewart; their early forebears were good business managers, not princes.
Henry Harrison in a standard work entitled Surnames of the United Kingdom (Morland Press, London: 1918), informs us that the surnames MacNaughton and McNaught are of common Celtic origin and derive from nig, Necht or Neachd, and Nechtan. The actual difference in the two forms of surname of the old clan comes to this: MacNauchtan means son of the little pledge, and McNaught means son of the pledge.
The first written use of the surname in a still-existing document was made in a charter or deed given approximately in the year 1246, when Malcolm. MacNachtan was referred to as the father of Gilchrist Mac-Nachtan. The suffix -an was replaced in later times by the ending -on and -en.
S. Baring-Gould in Familv Names and Their History says of the MacNauchtans; "This family descends from Nechtan, a Pictish King"; other writers have tentatively suggested the same thing. We shall be wise to avoid accepting this statement implicitly, and to set it down as an inference based upon what is known of the origin of the clan surname.
There were in fact three Pictish Kings named Nechtan, all of whom were interested in promoting the work of the Christian church, in strange contrast to most of the other Kings of Caledonia, who were quite normally — for their times — preoccupied with wars and sudden death. The first Nechtan ruled after 458 A.D.; the second after 599; the third from the year 710 until about 730. No later Pictish or Scottish King bore the name, so it is manifestly impossible for anyone to connect definitely any of the three with the Clan MacNauchtan, which emerged into history on its ancient tribal lands along the loch and river Tay in the time of King Malcolm Canmore (1058-1093).
The early Picts occupied that part of Scotland lying north of the births of Forth and Clyde, and the scene of their chief activities was the ancient kingdom of Fortrenn between the firths and the Grampian mountains on the north, and east from the Drumalban Mountains to the North Sea. Present-day Perthshire and Forfarshire make up most of what was once called Fortrenn.
The Pictish capital was a movable seat, depending somewhat upon the convenience of the King or the location of his own primitive castle. At various times the head of the Pictish government was established at Abernethy, Forteviot, or Scone in Fortrenn, or at Inverness in the northern Highlands.
What we know for sure about the beginnings of the MacNauchtans is that at the outset of accepted history they had been living "for ages" in the strath or valley of the Tay, and that their chiefs were called Thanes of Tayside. They were in the general region of Scone, Perth, Forteviot, and Abernethy, chief centers of the old Picts. Within a short distance in Forfarshire is marshy Nechtansmere, in the parish of Dunichen (Nechtan’s Castle), where in the year 685 King Brude and his Pictish army cut to pieces an invading Saxon army led north of the Firth of Tay and beyond the Sidlaw Hills by King Egfrid of Northumbria, who himself was slain. The modern equivalent of the name Brude is Proud, Dr. George F. Black tells us in Surnames of Scotland.
South of the Firth of Tay in eastern Perthshire is the little town of Abernethy where an early church was established by the first King Nechtan, who reigned from 458 to 482. Here stands the ancient round stone tower of Abernethy, seventy-two feet high, which scholars believe was started in the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin in the latter half of the ninth century. It probably was used as a watch tower and place of refuge by the monks in times of Norse invasions. Abernethy as a place name is supposed to derive from the nearby ford of the Nethy, a small stream which flows into the river Earn. Nethy, you probably will guess, has some relation to Nechtan.
I mention these place names — Dunnichen, Nechtansmere, and Abernethy — only to show that traces of the old Pictish name Nechtan linger in the homelands of the MacNauchtans. Nechtan as a surname survived for a while; the uncommon modern name Nockton may derive from it.
Some old maps show a point in Forfarshire marked Macbeth’s Castle and if the villain king of Shakespeare’s tragedy lived there, a MacNauchtan Thane may have known him, or fought with him, or heard the clank of his armor. History does not agree with Shakespeare. Macbeth was neither worse nor better than other Kings of his time. His wife, Queen Gruoch, did not plot to bring about the murder of Duncan, who died in battle.
Some of the Celtic scholars who have specialized in Scottish surnames are strict — perhaps excessively so — in their rules as to how those beginning with Mac should be written. Dr. Black tells us that only the sons of the Nauchtan of Malcolm Canmore’s day should be recorded thus: MacNauchtan. Names of grandsons and all who have followed, properly should be written as Macnauchtan or Macnaughton, without using the capital N. The Antrim branch of the clan adheres to this rule and writes the name as Macnaghten.
But usage has powerful influence and does not defer to authorities. Even as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century it became customary to abbreviate Mac names, thus: M’Nauchtan. The apostrophe of writers and printers was an inverted comma, and it looked something like a small, elevated c. Consequently MacNauchtan or Macnaughton, like other surnames beginning with Mac, came to take the form McNaughron. That is the way such names are usually spelled in the United States and Canada today, but descendants of the clan with pride in the past often are found using the unabbreviated MacNaughton.
In writing this history I have had to contend constantly with variations in form of the clan surname, often in the same document. Which should be used in this work? The best solution seems to be to use the form most generally used in each period. So it shall be MacNauchtan down to the days of the last chief in Argyll in the early eighteenth cen-tury, and MacNaughton or McNaughton thereafter; Macnaghten for the Antrim branch, MacNaucht and McNaught for the Galloway sub-clan, and whatever names were taken by various persons through carelessness on settling in Ulster. In quoting from texts and documents I shall endeavor to give surnames just as found.
Let me caution you to disregard an oft-repeated fallacy: that all surnames spelled with Mac are Scottish, and that those beginning with Mc are always Irish. What of John MacCormack, the Irish tenor? He would have resented that. There is no telling from the use of Mac or Me in a name, and from that only, whether the owner is of Scottish or Irish descent. The Irish are Celts, too, and their Mac names have been subject to the same changes.
When King Malcolm Canmore married the Saxon princess Margaret after the Norman William the Conqueror had defeated the Saxons under King Harold at Hastings in 1066, the new Queen was followed to Scotland by many of her own race. Angles previously had taken root in southeastern Scotland.
Queen Margaret, high-minded and pious, deemed the Scottish Celts barbarous, and their Gaelic language uncouth. King Malcolm dutifully humored her wish to introduce the speech of the Angles and Saxons, and to brush up the ceremonials of the Church to make them conform more closely to those of Rome. The Gaelic language was doomed to fade, but it persists in the Highlands and was used in parts of Galloway until the nineteenth century. The modern Scots vernacular, sometimes called "braid Scots," is based upon the Anglian language, just as modern English is, but there are many differences. The Scots have a wealth of idiomatic expressions entirely unfamiliar to the English.
The name MacNaucht was pronounced in early times something like MacNawkt. The Angles, Saxons, and Britons of Strathclyde had trouble with it; they found it easier to say McNate or McKnight. As a matter of fact, McKnight is the exact English equivalent of the Scottish surname McNaught. Variations in spelling began to appear, to fit the varieties of pronunciation. In addition to McKnight, there were McNeight, McNaight, McNeit, and so on. Keepers of official records all seemed to know very well that the name really was McNaught, and when a member of the tribe went out for rebellion in Covenanting times, he was usually proscribed as McNaught even though he signed his name McNaight.
Further changes appeared after the, migration to Ulster in the seventeenth century. There McNaught frequently became McNutt or McNott, and McKnight and McNeight appeared as McKnitt or McNitt. It is apparent that the two latter forms were pronounced as McKnight for some time after settlement had been made in the American colonies. Gradually the K was dropped from McKnitt, and the short sound of i took the place of the long sound, as in McKnight. Still another variation appeared in America, as dissatisfied owners of the name McNitt changed to McNett.
So in fact all the dozens of variations fall into two categories: the Galloway name McNaught and the Anglicized equivalent McKnight. In Scotland all the variants have disappeared, and these two remain. It might be well if all of us could follow the example of our kinsmen in Galloway and reform the use of the surname by choosing either Mc-Naught or McKnight, according to preference.
The division of the McNaughts from the parent MacNauchtan clan occurred seven centuries ago, and because of the differences between Highland and Lowland environment, variances in outlook developed. There is for example the attachment of the Highland MacNauchtans to the royal house of Stewart, for which they fought loyally to the end. The Galloway McNaughts, on the other hand, were rebels against the Stewart ideas; their loyalties were for ideals embodied in the principles of freedom upheld by the Presbyterian Church.
Both MacNauchtans and McNaughts paid the same price for their loyalties: many of their members fled to Northern Ireland when Scotland became too uncomfortable for them, and many of their children and grandchildren made their way to colonial America. So now we have a great deal in common: we are all for the same democratic ways of life and the same freedoms.
Other septs have surnames not at all like the original. Examples: Henry, McHenry, and McMath. It is assumed that the sons of an early Henry MacNaughton became known with the surnames Henry and MacHenry. The sons of Matthew MacNaucht, some time before 1296, adopted the surname McMath; the coat of arms used by McMath chiefs was based on that of the McNaughts of Kilquhanity.
The MacNaughtons may reflect that the old Scottish spirit of independence never flamed more brightly than in the "Give me liberty or give me death" speech of Patrick Henry, whose grandfather was an Aberdonian and whose father came to Virginia early in the eighteenth century.
Sir Robert Douglas in his Baronage of’Scotland says: "Nothing proves the grandeur and antiquity of a clan more than the great number of tribes descended from [it], who, though they have assumed other surnames, yet value themselves upon being descendants of the Clan MacNauchtane." He cites "only a few": the McHenrys, the McNairs, McNeills, McBraynes, and McKnights.
William Buchanan in Ancient Scottish Surnames confirms this list of septs and adds the name McNeit. In mentioning the McNairs he says "especially those of Glenfyne." It will be shown that Glenfyne was within the territory of the MacNauchtans of Argyll. General McNair was the commander of our ground forces in the second World War who lost his life in France.