kenneth is my name

 

Today 28/10/20 I attended my cousins burial this is during the time of covid19 social distancing, which meant there was no large groups to attend a funeral parlour we could stand around the graveside social distancing then only close family members were going for coffee and cake at the leapark, the col cuz ken was laid into the family plot beside his niece his brother his mum and dad and grandparents, as we watched on me in my running gear! First time I had attended a funeral in running clothes but they were all black in fairness to me and I know for sure the cool cuz wouldn’t mind he was getting buried in crocodile skin cowboy boots and the jazziest shirt you can possibly imagine, I know he would be fine with me looking like a ninja foot to head in tight black clothing,

  Mum was there of course, she views herself as the last of the Cameron’s which is fair enough as she was attending her nephews funeral a Nicol aunt Kates married name, I wondered if mum was reflecting on one out one in? as only three days previously my nephew Charlie and his wife jasmine gave birth to their second child Alfie Kenneth Whittington, all this reflection made me revisit the history of my name and put this post up

What’s in a name?

                My own personal name was always a curiosity for me, now as an adult I truly like my name only at times during my childhood did I hate my name, sometimes due to it being long it can fair fill a box in an application or official form, my name is not common but still mainstream enough not to be unique, I feel it almost says what/who I am which is strange; as I am the second youngest of seven and mum nearly called me Paul! This surprises me due to the lineage of my name (more on that later) I decided to ask mum about that, my name is-

 Kenneth Cameron Alexander

 

I am a parent myself knowing how long myself and my sons mother spent choosing who became our only child’s name makes me wonder if the same effort was made for mine, for my son we were unsure if we would be having a boy or a girl during the pregnancy, which made us deliberate over both male and female names, it was all good fun it’s such a privilege to name a child we should all if we are fortunate enough truly appreciate this privilege, with this in mind we took lots of factors into consideration our society religion family lines etc, we ended up choosing Cameron Thomas for a boy Shelby for a girl, curiously the boy’s name was from our family lines a traditional strong family scots name in our society and not tied to a set religion, whereas the girls name was purely because we thought it sounded beautiful and cheerful? Sexism seems to start even before we are born

               

 

 

                My given name (first name) Kenneth, I am surprised this name never went to one of my older siblings as it’s a name that has been traditionally used in my mother’s family for a long time The name is an Anglicised form of two entirely different Gaelic personal names: Cainnech and Cináed. The modern Gaelic form of Cainnech is Coinneach; the name was derived from a byname meaning "handsome", "comely". (yip that’s me)

                From my mother’s side I am from a long line of Kenneth’s, mum had a brother Kenneth who died as a three year old it makes me sad I had an uncle kenny I never knew, mums  sister aunty Kate named her second son Kenneth who at the time of writing this was in his seventies and still just known as the cool cuz ken, if you knew him you would know why, mum and aunt Kate were the only two surviving children of Arthur and Elizbeth Cameron, grandpa Arthur was one of four children of my great grandpa Kenneth Cameron, my grandpas brother Kenneth (mums uncle) named after my great grandfather (this Kenneth is buried in Egypt after dying in battle at Tobruk mum still has a handkerchief of his) my sister Karen has carried on this tradition and I have a nephew Kenneth Whittington, its perhaps easier looking at this from mums perspective her grandad was Kenneth her uncle was Kenneth she had a brother Kenneth and a cousin, and two nephew`s were a Kenneth all long before I came into the world and was named Kenneth, she now also has a grandson Kenneth, perhaps one day she shall have a great grandchild called Kenneth this would make it the seventh generation of Cameron Kenny’s!

         

great uncle kenneth cameron

       I was always surprised by mums’ different pronunciations of my name when I was in the bad books, she would say a right proper English sounding KENNETH! But happily, calls me kenny when speaking to me and of me to others, when she talks of my cousin he is always plain ken we all just called him the cool cuz, when she spoke of her uncle her pronunciation was always kinny never the long version? She spoke very rarely of her brother and always just called him Kenneth as he tragically died as a child of whooping cough, I guess he never lived long enough to gain a familiar name?

                It wasn’t until I was in my fifties that I considered these differences in my name and the significance of mums pronunciation, language is almost a living thing it grows and develops diversifies loses some of its older self develops a new character all the time, when they say a language is dead it isn’t really there will be traces of the marks that language made in the modern global sense, my given name like my middle name is scots Gaelic in origin some people would have that as a dead language and to some degree much of it is, the problem with the Gaelic is not so much the death of the words which my mind finds a pleasant musicale tongue, I still love to hear woman sing Gaelic mouth music I smile a happy memory of it,  but the ability of placing those syllables and sounds on paper especially with a Latin alphabet is near impossible, I could give a thousand examples but let’s just take a simple one loch, all over Scotland this is a body of water in Ireland its spelt lough but pronounced the same, the pronunciation in English sounds more like lock to them, but this is the barrier of the twenty six letters in the Latin alphabet we use here in Scotland to write down words/sounds, so the ch of loch or the ugh in Ireland are both an alphabetical attempt to make a guttural sounding end to an approximate pronunciation, loch lough lock are the Latin based alphabetical attempts at these sounds. Gaelic words in general do not translate well into a Latin alphabet (in my opinion) look at some of the spellings in welsh gallic!! the language of these Celtic peoples requires more than the twenty-six letters we would benefit from bringing in some Scandinavian style runic writing with a few extra symbols to get across the more musical syllables (again in my opinion)

 

great gran&grandpa-kenneth cameron maw her two 

sisters&cousins

                Take my own given name the first king to unite all the tribes of Scotland was Kenneth McAlpine, that is how his name is written in history books these days, but when he was alive in the mid eight hundreds over twelve hundred years ago, the language was entirely different and his name was in Medieval Gaelic: Cináed mac Ailpin, then progressed to Modern Scottish Gaelic: Coinneach mac Ailpein, at that time in history the mac part meant son so his fathers name was Alpín mac Echdach, his two sons, Constantine and Áed, would have had the surname mac Kenneth or Cináed or Coinneach depending on which scholar tried to piece together and structure the name out of a given set of symbols, i find this fascinating my parents put the full name of kenneth on my birth certificate with never much intention of using that official title and have called me kenny all my life. I cannot talk i called my son cameron with the full knowledge i would always call him cammy! I love this modern form of title giving then a person spending their whole lifes being called something else, at least mine is a shortened version of my actual given name, i could recite numerous occasions of friends and family when at an offical gathering funeral or wedding everyone being stunned to learn a persons given name is entirely differenent from what they are called its hillarious

            Moving on to cameron my middle name which is also my sons given name and my mothers maiden name, this again coming from my great grandfather (and further but i have yet to research that) mum and dad gave only two of their seven children the second/middle name of cameron, being happy to say I am one it gives me roots that I like, From a Scottish surname meaning "crooked nose" from Gaelic cam "crooked" and sròn "nose The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Adam de Kamerun, which was dated 1214, witnessed a charter by David de Hayu to the monks of Cupar, during the reign of King Alexander 11 of Scotland, 1214 - 1249. Surnames became necessary then when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Surnames weren’t widely used until after the Norman Conquest in 1066. As the country’s population grew, it became necessary to distinguish between people and so names began to include descriptions of the person, such as Thomas son of John, Peter the Baker, Richard the Whitehead, Mary Webster, etc. These descriptions would grow to form the surnames we recognise today.

To begin with, surnames were fluid and changed over time, or as a person changed his job. For example, John Blacksmith might become John Farrier as his trade developed.

The introduction of parish registers in 1538 helped establish the idea of hereditary surnames. However, it was still common in some parts of the country to find a person entered under one surname at baptism, married under another name and then buried under a third.

Today there are perhaps as many as 45,000 different English surnames, derived from all kinds of sources: nicknames, physical attributes, trades, place names etc.

Irish, Welsh and Highland Scottish names mostly derive from Gaelic personal names whereas traditional English and lowland Scottish surnames also reflect society as it was in the mid to late Middle Ages.

Common surnames such as Smith, Wright, Fletcher, Knight, Cook, Squire, Taylor and Turner are all based around medieval trades or occupations. Until the 12th century, most Scots did not have surnames. It was not until King David I’s decision to give large amounts of Scottish land to Norman nobles in return for their support of the Crown that the Norman tradition of surnames came into fashion. some chose to be named after their occupation (Shearer, Smith, Taylor) or perhaps after a colour (Brown, Black, Gray). For example, Reid, the Scots word for ‘red’, is a common Scottish surname which is indicative of Scotland having a higher-than-normal percentage of redheads. choosing a surname was a haphazard affair. You could be the son of somebody (Robertson, Davidson, Johnston) or adopt the Gaelic variation of ‘Mac’ rather than ‘son’ (MacDonald, MacLeod, Mackenzie). Contrary to popular belief, the ordinary clansmen rarely had any blood tie of kinship with the clan chiefs, but they sometimes took the chief's surname as their own when surnames came into common use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this is probably how my mother side became Cameron’s

            My eldest brother is George alexander who took my father’s name who took his father’s name all George alexanders, according to Wikipedia Alexander is a surname originating in Scotland. It is originally an Anglicised form of the Scottish Gaelic MacAlasdair. It is a somewhat common Scottish name, the region of Scotland where it traditionally is most commonly found is in the Highlands, this is strange considering there is no alexander tartan but there has been three king alexanders of Scotland as a given name, according to the web The name Alexander means Defender Of The People and is of Greek origin. ... There are many men of royalty named Alexander, from ancient Greece to the 21st Century, including Alexander the Great. Remembering of course that name is just a jumble of the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet we now use, the ancient scots alphabet would have looked entirely different and the ancient Greek alphabet would have that written entirely differently again probably Cyrillic script.

            Don Kenjo Alejandro!