The girls' given name, "Helen Watson"

[Rosinish]

Can you name all the children in order from eldest down to youngest please to give us an idea of where the name 'Watson' may have derived from?

Scottish naming pattern is a help but only if we know the line of names in order.

Annie

[gelin5]

Hi Rosinich.

Here are the children of Daniel McGregor & Margaret Primrose -

Janet Robertson McGregor, bap 1800 Cramond
Helen Watson McGregor bap 1803 Cramond
Isabell McGregor bap 1806 Cramond
Ann Wright McGregor bap 1808 Cramond (my ancestor)
Elizabeth McGregor bap 1810 Cramond
Alexander McGregor bap 1814 Cramond
Margaret McGregor bap 1819 Cramond

---------
Here are the children of Isabell McGregor and James Aitkenhead -

Thomas Aitkenhead born 25 Dec 1826, bap 14 Jan 1827, Cramond
Margaret Aitkenhead, bap 31 Jan 1830, Cramond
Daniel Aitkenhead, bap 27 May 1832, Cramond
Elizabeth Aitkenhead, bap 15 Mar 1835, Ratho, Midlothian
Isabella Aitkenhead, bap 21 Jan 1838, Duddingston, Midlothian
Charles Aitkenhead, bap 13 Sep 1840, Duddingston, Midlothian
Helen Watson Aitkenhead, bap 10 Feb 1843, Duddingston, Midlothian
Harriet Aitkenhead, bap 24 May 1846, Duddingston, Midlothian

[Forfarian]

Margaret Primrose was born in Linlithgow, Cramond, Midlothian in about 1782.

Where did that come from? Linlithgow and Midlothian are mutually exclusive.

Her mother's name was apparently Janet Rankin, as shown on Margaret's death certificate. But the identity of "Mr Primrose" is unknown. This becomes something of a scenario out of a Victorain novel because the Linlithgow area was "Primrose territory", i.e. several estates owned by the Earls of Rosebury, i.e., the Primrose family. But no connection has been found between my Margaret Primrose and the Earl's family!

I take it that you have checked Cramond Kirk Session minutes checked to see if they say anything about her birth?

She & her husband, Daniel McGregor seem to have been humble 'servants' or similar, according to the census returns. They married in 1800 in Dalmeny, West Lothian.
Their second child was named, "Helen Watson McGregor", b. 1803, Cramond, Midlothian.

What was the name of Daniel's mother? Did they name a child after her? If so, was if the first child?

Their third child was Isabell McGregor, b. 1806, Cramond. She married James Aitkenhead, probably in about 1825, and probably in either Cramond or Edinburgh city.
The seventh child of Isabell McGregor & James Aitkenhead was Helen Watson Aitkenhead, b. 1843, Duddingston, Midlothian.

It could be that she was named after Isabell's sister, of course.

[gelin5]

Hi Forfarian,

I will answer your questions but I hope you can also tell me why you are so interested in this topic. It can't be a co-incidence that you are related to a family named Aitkenhead, even if they were in Lancashire. Is that family descended from a Scottish Aitkenhead?

> I take it that you have checked Cramond Kirk Session minutes ...
I checked as much as I could a few years ago. I even paid a researcher in Scotland to do some digging for me but she came up blank, Interestingly, she never found that Margaret Primrose's mother was Janet Rankin.

> What was the name of Daniel's mother?
I don’t know. Daniel was born in Caithness in about 1781.

>It could be that she was named after Isabell's sister, of course.
Yes, that’s possible.

-------------
I did a check of familysearch.org and it looks like two-word girls’ names, such as “Mary Ann” DO come up in searches before 1800. However, no cases of “Helen Watson” are found before 1800. But between 1800 and 1900, dozens of examples of “Helen Watson” in Scotland are found. And the very first example is my relative, Helen Watson McGregor, born 1803, daughter of Daniel McGregor and Margaret Primrose!

So far, I haven’t studied all the cases to see if there any common denominators. It doesn’t look like all the family who used this name all belonged to the same religious groups but I might be wrong on that. To me, it looks like a case of some famous woman, perhaps within a certain religious group, being honoured, someone who was probably born in the second half of the 18th century.

[Rosinish]

Personally, I think it more likely that the name Watson was from a previous generation of Daniel McGregor or Margaret Primrose i.e. possibly/probably one of the mother's maiden names or even the grandmother's maiden name?

Annie

[Fordyce]

Mention of Thomas Aitkenhead prompted me to check out my data. You probably have this already: Thomas Aitkenhead (b 25-12-1826 Cramond s/o James Aitkenhead & Isabella Magriger [sic]) married on 17-5-1850 St Cuthberts to Mary Merchant Ogilvie (b 3 Aug 1820 St Cuthberts d/o William Ogilvie & Jean Merchant).

These Ogilvies (or Oglibies) came from Haddington, ELN.

William's niece Elizabeth Ogilvie married James Sibbald Preston, my gtgtgdfather. Elizabeth Ogilvie could be my gtgtgdmother but that's another story. I only mention this because, although the Sibbald middlename came down every line with a child named James, I've never established its origin - the nearest being a Dr Sibbald who lived a short distance away.

Have you checked out Hugh Wallis' index of middlenames? http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/ScotlandMiddleNamesIGI.htm#PageTitle
The index for Midlothian has hundreds with a Watson middlename. There are 21 occurrences of Helen Watson xxxs 1803-1873 - and that's just the IGI.

As it happens, James Sibbald Preston's mother was Marion Watson whose surname was repeated as a middle name several times in later generations. 

[Rosinish]

I did a check of familysearch.org and it looks like two-word girls’ names, such as “Mary Ann” DO come up in searches before 1800. However, no cases of “Helen Watson” are found before 1800. But between 1800 and 1900, dozens of examples of “Helen Watson” in Scotland are found. And the very first example is my relative, Helen Watson McGregor, born 1803, daughter of Daniel McGregor and Margaret Primrose!

You may want to firstly check areas for your finds as not all Ministers/Clergy kept neat books with all details.

Info. is relatively sparse in a lot (if not most) areas pre statutory 1855 records.

Some are more elaborate than others too as there were no hard & fast rules, it was a case of each parish to their own.

One of the best I've seen (although not births) was (and not one which includes any names you mention) an 1827 census by Rev. James Curdie for the Isle of Gigha (Argyll) which is very elaborate mentioning 'sister of/brother of' for different households;

http://www.gigha.org.uk/viewItem.php?id=8932&parentId=8926&sectionTitle=About+Gigha

Annie

[Forfarian]

So far, I haven’t studied all the cases to see if there any common denominators. It doesn’t look like all the family who used this name all belonged to the same religious groups but I might be wrong on that. To me, it looks like a case of some famous woman, perhaps within a certain religious group, being honoured, someone who was probably born in the second half of the 18th century.

Well, I cannot produce any evidence for or against that except to point out that no-one, so far, has heard of this hypothetical famous Helen Watson.

I am not convinced that double christian names, such as Mary Ann, are analogous to double names consisting of a christian name followed by a surname as middle name. I have seen Mary Anns turning up in later records as Marion or Marianne, and vice versa, in other words Mary Ann was seen as a single composite name sometimes spelled as two words. You could never take Helen Watson to be a composite name in the same way.

Why not try an experiment? Take another pair of names at random and do a similar analysis. Say Elizabeth Wilson, or Mary Donaldson, or even Ann Wright. In each case a common given name and a common surname. If they show a similar pattern, i.e. the double name only begins to appear about 1800 and gets commoner with time, would that not be of interest?

You could also investigate each of the Helen Watson xxxs you have found, and eliminate any who have a grandparent or great-grandparent named Watson, and see if there is a pattern among those left over.

And if you don't know the name of Daniel's mother, you can't dismiss the likelihood that she was Helen Watson, which is by far the  most likely explanation.

[Ruskie]

In your family, if you are unable to find Watson as a maiden surname, might it be possible that Watson was a surname of someone unrelated to the family, yet significant enough that it was carried down to the next generation.

Recently I was doing some research about a Scottish family who had emigrated to Australia in the early 1800s. This family had many children and the father wrote a "diary" which still survives (now in the possession of a library), passed down the generations as per his request. In it he explained in great detail how his children were named. One which comes to mind is that one of his daughters was given a surname as a middle name because she was named in honour of someone who was "kind to his wife." Similar reasons were given for the naming of his other children. Significantly, he requested that certain names be passed down to later generations. I found this fascinating.

Is it possible that you are reading too much into Helen "Watson" ?