Two interesting photographs

[neloon]

Nice pictures & thanks for sharing the background.

I have some distant ancestors that were Preece's (my 5th great grandmother on Dad's side), so I was aware of the Welsh to English transliteration from ap Rees to Prees, etc. I thought the Welsh 'ap' was more or less equivalent to the Gaelic (Irish or Scots) M'/Mc/Mac, meaning 'son of' as opposed to the Irish O' meaning 'grandson of'. But I'm no great scholar of linguistics either. Neither do I know of the female equivalents, aside from 'nic' meaning 'daughter of', following the maternal line.

The arrival of surnames rather confused this e.g. if someone is called MacDonald it no longer means that his father's name was/is Donald but rather that he is descended from someone called Donald. Therefor all these forms essentially represent patronymics rather than the littoral meaning.

Alan

P.S. For those who might be further interested in the intricacies of Scottish aristocratic life, here are a few links

https://www.clan-forbes.org/post/sir-ewan-forbes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Ew...,_11th_Baronet

https://archive.ph/20130421125256/ht...dy-Forbes.html