G F Black's
The Surnames of Scotland says, "Shank of that Ilk, an ancient family in Midlothian, derive their name from lands of that name there". The earliest documentary reference is to Murdoch Shank, "an immediate son of Shank of that Ilk" in 1319 in Fife. Black cites a reference to a Schankis in Ayrshire in 1426, one in 1474 in Glasgow, so the name was known in Lanarkshire several centuries ago. Whether the actual people referred to were descendants of the Shank(s) family that originated in Midlothian, or whether their surname was an abbreviation of something else, such as Longshanks or Crookshanks, is impossible to say.
You might like to take a look at
https://archive.org/stream/genealogist01lond/genealogist01lond_djvu.txt which contains a long section which is, I think, at least partly intended to debunk Black's idea about the origin of the surname and of the family.
I very much doubt that anyone consciously added the 's' to the name. Spelling of names was a very inexact science until the 20th century, and you will probably find the same individual with various different spellings. Black mentions references to a Stephen Shanks, spelled Schankis in 1488 and Synkis in 1490.
There are lots of places in Scotland which are either called Shank, or whose name includes the word Shank.
The one you are interested in is probably the one in the parish of Borthwick. See
https://canmore.org.uk/site/234686/shank-househttp://www.stravaiging.com/history/castle/shank-houseThere are photographs of the immediate surroundings, including Shank Bridge, at
http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NT3361As for 'clans', please get that notion out of your head. The clans were a social feature of the Gaelic-speaking Highlands, and Midlothian is firmly in the Lowlands. Your Shanks ancestors four or five hundred years ago would probably have been horrified had anyone suggested to them that they had anything to do with any Highland clan, all of whom they would have regarded as dangerous savages.
Unfortunately the Brigadoon industry, exemplified by
https://www.houseofnames.com/?nav=yes and
https://forebears.co.uk/surnames/shank has successfully peddled the erroneous idea that every Scot belongs to a clan, no doubt sending many a descendant of a good solid Lowland family off on a wild goose chase after tenuous and historically unreliable connections to one Highland clan or another. All of these Brigadoon industry web sites have gleaned what information they have from
The Surnames of Scotland.
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Topic: Shank(s) family history (Read 2680 times)