that was done
in Stirling, Scotland, in 1991 for Clan Ewing in America. The following is taken from that report:ORIGIN OF THE EWING NAME
The information included in this chapter is taken from Chapter IX of Clan Ewing in Scotland, by Elbert William Robinson Ewing, the 1991 Scotland Research Report and the 1995 Ireland Research Report for Clan Ewing in America.
This story of our clan origin considered in connection with the Gaelic Highland records, is all the light we have regarding the origin of our family name. That evidence leads to the conclusion that the name of the Glasgow-Loch Lomond Ewing clan, or family from which the Ewings here considered descended, is the Cymric Lowland origin. It is clear, in my [E. W. R. Ewing] opinion, that those who hold to the Gaelic origin overlook the Cymric evidence, certainly as to our family, it is worth repeating for emphasis. Of course it must not be forgotten that, as has been said, there are Ewings who are Scotch or Scotch ancestry who are not descended from our ancient Scotch ancestors. For them, certainly, I do not attempt to speak.
In 1919 a very intelligent genealogist of the Hon. Thomas Ewing family gave the following:
"My Ewing' line is from Scotland by way of Ireland. The name is, in the case of my line (and I think likely in that of all Ewings) from the Gaelic 'EOGHAN' (the 'GH' is a 'H' in sound, as in Meagher, sounded Maher; Daugherty sounded Doherty, &c.), spelt phonetically EUEN, EWEN, EWIN, EWAN, YOUEN, &c. The 'g' in Ewing was an addition made in the spelling of the name by those of English speech, if not race. This because in pronouncing the name they give the final 'n' a 'ng' or nasal sound. Thus did they with Waring from Warin, Huling from Hulin, &c."
This, it is very clear to me, is a representative error as to descent of the Hon. Thomas Ewing branch; and as he belonged to our family, it is error as to the rest of those of whom I write. While, as has been said, some of the descendants of the Gaelic Eoghan ancestors either through the McEwen of Otter or otherwise, may now be known as Ewings, yet the history of the Cymric Ewing ancestors proves that the greater number of Ewings are of the Lowland origin and from that source brought with them the name. This, I am firmly convinced, is true of many of the Ewings of the western portions of Scotland, whose ancestors at a very early day drifted out from the Cymric family in the Glasgow Lomond community, as it is of our Glasgow-Lomond ancestors.
Spooner, who has given us an extensive study of the historic families of America, we again may notice in this connection, says:
"Of Celtic derivation, the surname Ewing is found at an early neighborhood of Loch Lomond . . . It is found associated as tribal surname with the Colquhouns, usually written Calhoun in the United States. An English writer on surnames puts it among the earliest Saxon names ending in -ing, as Harding, Browning, etc. It may be of Danish rather than Saxon origin, as it is still common in Norway, one of the recruiting grounds of the so-called Danes of early English history, and especially as its early location was in the western part of Scotland, which was long subject to the raids of the Danish sea-kings."
McEwen, the Scotch genealogist of the McEwens, says:
"The name Ewen (Ewing) is a distinctive, ancient, and not very common name, derived from the Gaelic Eoghan, meaning 'kind natured' (Latin Eugenius)."
Eugenius may be a Latin equivalent of Ewen; but it is, as we have seen, at least a fact that in the Latin list of the Gaelic Kings the spelling Ewen is used.
But the great trouble with the effort to link all Ewings with the Gaelic origin of a name similar to ours, is that about the time of the Gaelic Kings of the Ewen name and long before the name in the Highlands distinguished any family or clan, the name existed in the Lowland Cymric country and was borne by those of the Cymric stock. Borne by those of that Lowland stock, the name existed hundreds of years before the coming of the Danes. Since it was the custom of the invading Teutons, including the Danes, "to adopt the name of the Celtic tribe they displaced," as Shane (Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race, 302) and other authorities tell us, if the name be common in the European home of the Danes, it is not at all impossible that it was carried there from Scotland.
McEwen, unable to explain some facts which appear not to have been fully investigated, qualified somewhat his all too sweeping conclusion, by adding:
"The name is distinctly of Gaelic and clan origin, and except where particular family histories and other evidence point to a different conclusion, persons bearing the name and traceable to the localities known to have been occupied by the early clan, its septs and descendants, are of the same race and probably sprung from the McEwens of Otter. In the Lowland districts the blood has mixed largely with that of the Lowland inhabitants."
Our Ewings are "traceable to the localities known to have been occupied by the early clan" known as Ewing long before the Otter McEwens had a clan existence; and so measured by McEwen own rule, we do not get our family name from the Otter clan. Hence as to us "other evidence" points a conclusion different from his. For the same reason, among others, nothing warrants that too broad assertion that the widely scattered and long numerous Ewings of "the Lowland districts" are explained by the Otter blood mixing "largely with that of the Lowland inhabitants." As I have shown, our Ewing ancestors were numerous in the Lowlands and in the Glasgow Loch Lomond region before the first Otter McEwen existed. Ewing, certainly, was a Lowland name long before 1047. Ewin, father of Bishop Kentigern, lived nearly 600 years earlier-and it was in 1047 that Aodha Alain died; and Barrister McEwen, his expounder and the authorities upon which they rely say that Alain was the grandfather of Ewen, the ancestor of the McEwens of Otter.
Hence, the evidence, an epitome of which I have given as ground of my conclusion, leads me to conclude that our name, as well as that of the clan, is of Cymric Lowland origin, and so I concur, certainly as to our family, with those authorities who hold that the surname Ewing is among the earliest Saxonized names ending in g. It is, therefore, a Celtic name Teutonized. Ewin, the father; Ewing, the son. The g of the name is an important part of the evidence of its Briton origin. It was the Cymric Britons, not the Highlanders, who were earliest Anglo-Saxized. Eoghan of the Highlands became McEwen. Eoghan, Ewen, the father; McEwen, the son. Eoghan, Ewen, McEwen, Gaelic, (Macbain's note to p. 251 of Skene's Highlanders); Engenius, Urien, Owen, Ewene, Euin, Ewin, meaning "well born" quite as much in the Cymric, Celtic Briton, and have the same meaning in the Cymric tongue as Eogan (or Eoghan) in the Gaelic. (Id.) So as a result of the contact by the Saxons and Angles with the Celts of the Lowlands, a sketch of which has been given that we may better appreciate this fact, we have the present form of our surname-the Highlands having escaped almost to this day that Saxon-Angle influence.
Another important fact of history that we may consider in this connection is that the Ewings of Scotland were of the Covenanter faith. From that source our family during its earlier days in America got its Presbyterian proclivities. It is quite probable that most Ewings of our branches are Presbyterians yet; though many, for reasons discussed in my Pioneer Gateway of the Cumberlands (manuscript at writing this), in later years very devoutly have become identified with other churches. As far as I have been able to discover, from the very earliest days of the "Solemn League and Covenant for the Defense and Reform of Religion" against popery and prelacy, in the midst of its great fight from 1638 to 1643, our people gave it support without stint, and now and then at the price of life. Earlier they were what would now be called Protestants; and, true to the family traditions, those near Londonderry at the time of its heroic and epochal defense, joined the fighting Protestant ranks or otherwise supported the Protestant movement. Some recent English writers say:
"It is a significant fact that this Strathclyde region was the stronghold, or, as it might be otherwise put, the hotbed, of the Covenantry movement. . . This Strathclyde region is even now (1907) the greatest stronghold of dissent (against the established and the Roman Catholic Churches). Proportionately to its inhabitants dissent is a good deal more powerfully represented in Glasgow than in the eastern capital" (Edinburgh).
It is true that some of the Ewings adhered, with disastrous results, to the cause of Prince Charles Edward Stuart which terminated at fatal Culloden April 27, 1746. That Charles, we know, was a Catholic; but he was a Scotchman and, from the Scotch standpoint, the rightful heir to the throne. The comparatively few Ewings who did join his standard, like heroic Flora McDonald, who aided him to escape, finally landing her in London Tower, and thence by happy fate an exile to America, were actuated rather by motives of patriotism than by sentiments of religion. But our direct ancestors, as we have said, then had long been out of Scotland.
Some additional information about the name Ewing is taken from a research report
that was done
in Stirling, Scotland, in 1991 for Clan Ewing in America. The following is taken from that report:
The Name Ewing in 16th and 17th Century Stirling
I'm afraid we must begin with a complication. It has been suggested that the name Ewing may be related to Ewein (which is certainly true) and McEwan (which is possible). More surprisingly, it is also related to Hewingson and perhaps also to Young.
Yogh and the Zowings
The letter ‘yogh', written “ჳ” was in common use amongst Scots scribes from an early date and we can think of it as pronounced like a Y. When printing first emerged in Scotland, about 1500, the printers did not have this letter in their cases and so used the letter Z which looked rather like it. In some cases people later assumed that the letter was really a Z and so changed the way they pronounced the word; the Scots name McKenzie was once pronounced McKenyie. The old Scots word for a female sheep or ewe was "zow", pronounced yow to rhyme with cow.
Even at the end of the 17th century many Scots could not write and, even if they could, most records about them were made by clerks and other professionals; spelling, in any case, was not fixed. A clerk might use one form in the morning and another later in the day. We now think of the names Ewing and Young as quite distinct; and by the end of the 17th century there is no real confusion in the Stirling area. However, at the beginning of that century, though some people are always called Ewing and others always called Zoung (or Zowing, or Zong or Zung or even Zwng!) others tend to change from one to another. Clerks cross out one form and replace it with another; Thomas Ewing is recorded in the Stirling Council Minutes in November 1603 and on the same day, his name is spelled Zoung in the Guildry Minutes.
When I began this research, it soon became clear that, to a very great degree, people called Zoung etc and people called Ewing were found in the same parts of the Stirling area; in Cornton and its surroundings and in Denny and the middle Carron Valley, around Buckieside and Dundaff. And Ewings and Zoungs etc were in frequent contact, in a way characteristic of family relationships in a society where even fairly distant cousins are recognised as relatives.
I would suggest that, in the Stirling area at least, the names Ewing and Zoung are only just becoming distinct in 1600 and that earlier they were indistinguishable. Certainly, some people were entirely consistent. So Robert Zoung, who entered as a burgess and guildbrother of Stirling in 1612 is usually called Zoung till about 1642; after that he is always called Young. He has not changed his name; new clerks in Stirling have dropped the old-fashioned yogh and taken up the new-fashioned Y. The family who I will introduce as the Maurice and John Ewings were always called Ewing. But there is a gray area between, till about the 1640s.
Most modern indexers, dealing with manuscript sources, place the Z forms under Y, as Young. I have checked many such entries for Ewing connections and it has further underlined the close ties between Youngs and Ewings. However, I will report only on those lines which seem to end as Ewings, ignoring those which become Youngs, unless they have some direct bearing on the main Ewing story.
The terminal -son
In the 15th and 16th century I suspect there was another change. In the Cornton area, in 1480, were Michael and William Ewison, in 1492 Thomas Ewyngson and the widow of William Hewyngson and in 1563, Thomas Youngar (or Zoungar). By the 1590s the ancestors of the Youngs are said to have lived there past memory of man. Other people called Ewingson etc can be found in Stirling and the area in the 16th century and before but the name is absent by 1600.
Many families, during this period, dropped a terminal -son from their name. John Dickson became John Dick, John Christieson was sometimes called John Christie and the family called Ritchieson about 1600 have become Ritchie by 1700. Ewingson and Hewyngson are really quite close to Ewing. It cannot be proved but I have little doubt that Michael and William of 1492 are the ancestors of Thomas Young (alias Ewing) in 1600. I haven't found a Zouingson; but one might exist somewhere!
Spelling
Most of my information has been drawn from manuscript sources and I use the original spelling, putting Z for "yogh". But where I have consulted printed sources and it has not been possible to check back to the original manuscript, I have copied the printed source. This report will be no less consistent in spelling that were 17th century clerks. But you may still find the same person's name spelt in more than one way.
A final variation is between Ewing and Eweine. Most of the Ewings, as already noted, are always written Ewing. However, the names of William Ewing in Raploch and John Ewing, mason, are sometimes written as Eweine. I do not know how significant this is.
Women and Womens' Names
In Scotland, till the fairly recent past, women retained their own name when they married, making it much easier to follow them through life.
Most of the records available to us today are about property and money, which were mainly dealt with by men. Women are often mentioned only incidentally and many women from the past have left no record at all; the single reference to Jonat Ewing, daughter of John of Powhouse, was found after combing 11 volumes of unindexed manuscript!
Scope of the Report
The rest of this report is confined to the Ewing/Zoung family in the Stirling area; the period covered is roughly from about 1600 to 1700.
The records available before 1600 are rather patchy, though there are short runs of baptismal and marriage registers for Stirling for the late 16th century, which I have obviously consulted.
After the mid 17th century the urban Stirling Ewings were reduced to a single line, descendants of Maurice. Whichever branch William originated in, it is clear that he was no longer in Stirling by the late 17th century, so I do not report on this period in the town.
In the first half of the century, however, searchable records for the rural area are almost entirely confined to the land-owning elite and the small minority who left testaments; the second half of the century brings lower status people into the records in greater numbers, particularly through the IGI for St Ninians, and I therefore report on these. They help to illustrate what was going on earlier amongst the tenants and lease-holders.
Search of the Sheriff Court records for Stirlingshire would certainly have increased the coverage of the early 17th century rural area; however, there are dozens of large, unindexed manuscript volumes and literally hundreds of boxes of unsorted material. Random search is simply unrealistic.
A web of kinship
In the summer of 1606 Stirling was struck by plague and over 600 people died (the pre-plague population may have been 2-3000). On 26th September Marion Zung, spouse of Thomas Chalmers, maltman, lay dying in one of the ludges or huts which had been built outside the town for the sick and she dictated her last wishes to William Zoung, notary. She was owed money for the rent of Southfield by Thomas Ewing, servitor to the Earl of Mar; she owed money to two people called Zoung in the Buckieside area and she appointed Thomas Zoung, merchant of Stirling, her brother, as one of her executors; this last Thomas may be the same person as Thomas Ewing, the servitor. She died before the end of the month. In this single document almost every main strand of the Ewing/Zoung family in east-central Scotland is represented. The tragedy in the hut was at the centre of a web of kinship which we will now explore."
Mr. Harrison's report continues for several pages. However, the kinship that he describes in his report can not be linked to the family that is being documented in this work.
The following information was taken from the Ireland research report
done for Clan Ewing in
America in 1995.
The Celts who arrived in Ulster came along the same way as the original settlers, through Scotland and across. The Celts who entered the other parts of Ireland arrived later and were different - there was no Celtic identity as such, just individual warrior groups. Therefore when these small bands of warriors intermarried with the natives, the two mixtures, north and south of the border were different. I mention the border here, because the first man-made (as distinct from natural) border was built in the last few centuries BC by the northern Celt-native people to keep out the southerners. Although the society became Celtic in language and tradition, the genetic strength of the earlier people still predominated. When the border of this period was destroyed by the southern Celts, the northern refugees moved in quite large numbers to Scotland. So, as you can see, whichever part of Scotland the settlers came from, it is true that their ancestors had come from Ulster and that previous to that, the original Ulster people had arrived from Scotland. Confusing, isn’t it! Even more so, when we consider that the people who moved to and fro across the sea with Scotland, were referred to as Scots, because Ulster in that period was the land of the Scots - Scotland only became the land of the Scots after the large Celtic-native movement of refugees. Furthermore, when Americans talk of Ulster Scots this the correct name, not Scots Irish. The Presbyterian emigrants to America in the 18th century did not think of themselves as “Irish”, but they should not be thought of as Scottish either, as they had been born and bred in Ulster, as had their parents, at least. In fact, there was and is, no “Irish” people, so Ulster Scot comes closest to the truth.
Later, in the 12th century, the Anglo-Normans arrived and it was they who started to reform the administrative system, from its tribal orientation. When we talk about a townland, we refer to the land held probably by one pre-12th century family. A townland can be any size from a few acres to a few hundred. The parish system was probably begun in this period. The counties were not organized until the 16th century and they were adjusted later. This is why you will see Coleraine mentioned as both County Antrim and County Londonderry. It was originally in county Antrim, then had its own county created and then, in the early 1600's, was added to part of county Tyrone to create County Londonderry. The barony system grew up too in the 12th century, representing an easily organized area as it was based on tribal territory.
The famous so-called “Plantation” of 1609 onwards was begun to settle the most independent part of Ireland and the only part left not under control of the English. The idea was to permanently destroy this backdoor danger to England by making it “user-friendly”. This period is painted as one of native Roman Catholic versus interloper Protestant in many history books, but life is never that simple. Not all the natives were Roman Catholic, not all the “settlers” were Protestant and we have already mentioned the previous blood links. Furthermore the Gaelic of the natives and settlers had the same roots and was understandable to the other. The main contention was the land question. There was leeway left for “Irish” landlords, not all were dispossessed, but the English system ran on private individuals owning the land, whereas the Ulster native system allowed the tribe and family groups to own it.