 Muir
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This is a somewhat puzzling example of a name which appears to
have two quite different alternative meanings. The English one
would indicate residence beside a moor or heath, while the
Gaelic one is a descriptive suffix following a personal name.
When Thomas de la More acted as executor to the will of
Devorguilla, mother of King John Balliol, in 1291, it might
appear that his name contains the English territorial meaning.
but Norman bowdlerisation is at least as probable in this case;
and this shows very clearly in another example of 1296. When
Donald, son of Michael More in the wholly Gaelic province of the
Lennox, rendered homage, his name was written Dovenal le fiz
Michel More de Levenaghes. Here the name has been left without
the insertion of de or de la, in its proper role as an
adjective, which follows the noun in Gaelic. Mor simply means
big; and may be compared with Og (Young) and Beag (Small) which
have provided the Scottish surnames Oag and Begg.
The commonest descriptive title given to a man, in the oldest
surviving tongue of the country, is naturally one of the most
widely dispersed that one is likely to find. In the case of
families connected with the immigrant Anglo-Norman aristocracy,
it is natural to find the prestigious de with its suggestion of
a property origin. Yet it could be a mere slip of a Norman pen
that has preserved the names of de la More jurors at Conyngham
in 1296, while the knight who witnessed charters of King Robert
Bruce was designated simply Adam More. Robertus More was a
burgess of Aberdeen in 1317, and in the following century the
name is found in countries in which the Norse tongue was still
spoken - Orkney and Shetland.
In 1347 Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Adam Mure of Rowallan,
married King Robert II. The prosperity of the Mures of Rowallan
survived that of the royal Stewarts, only to die out in the male
line in 1700. A variant of their spelling of the name was borne
by the poet Edwin Muir (1887-1959), who belonged to the little
island of Wyre in Orkney and he shared this spelling with the
two distinguished brothers, John Muir the Sanskrit scholar and
Sir William Muir the biographer of Mohammed. General Sir John
Moore gave immortality to a spelling more common in Ireland, by
his heroic retreat to Corunna during the Napoleonic wars.
It has been suggested that such variants are peculiar to
particular localities: that Moar belongs to the northern isles,
and Moir to Aberdeen. The study of a single pedigree proves that
even if this happens to be the case today, it is without
historical significance. In the parish of Drymen, a Gaelic area
in which Buchanan chiefs had been parish clerks, the register
used the so-called Aberdonian spelling when John Moir married
Margaret Mclew in 1724. Their son, born in 1730, was likewise
called John Moir, but his son William, born in 1758, was given
the so called Shetland spelling Moar in the record of his
marriage in 1786. His wife had the local Gaelic name of
Elizabeth Buchanan, and he followed the immemorial occupation of
farming. The Drymen register called him William More when their
son was born. In the manner characteristic of this period their
son John More (1788-1868) entered the service of religion, and
became the Anti-Burgher minister at Cairneyhill in Fife. When he
married Jean, daughter of the theological Professor George
Paxton, the Edinburgh register reverted to the "Aberdonian"
spelling, Moir. Thereafter, as the minister's descendants moved
into new professions, ever farther from a Gaelic background that
was in any case evaporating behind them, their name ceased to
deviate from the More spelling. His son James, born in 1834,
became a doctor of medicine in Wigtownshire. His grandson John,
born in 1862, followed the same profession in England. His
great-grandson, Lieut. Colonel James More C.I.E., D.S.O.
(1883-1959) was Political Agent in Kuwait, and the Colonel's son
John More, born in 1931, is the distinguished Scottish artist. |
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