O'Beolan or Ross

english first name :Hugh ; last ??
display: Hugh, 4th earl of ross

gaelic first name: Aodh last: mac Uilleam
display name Aodh [gaelic words for earl of ross]

french Hugh Fitzwilliam
display Hugh, comte de Ross

Justin Durand,

Eugene started off discussing culturally/linguistically appropriate use of naming fields for Hugh, 4th Earl of Ross - http://www.geni.com/discussions/150244?msg=1046362

We have a mixture of English, Gaelic and French first names, surnames, patronyms and titles in the profile currently and Erica has dug up some references in Latin too.

Jason Scott Wills

per English last name:

Sir Robert Gordon (Earldom of Sutherland, P.36) states ... on page 46 they are called by the surname (O’Beolan, O’Beollain, Beolan) through 1333 when "Hugh Beolan, Earl of Ross" is recorded as one of the slain at the battle of Halidon Hill. The Beolan (O’Beolan) surname remains as the surname of the Earls of Ross from Uilleam O’Beolan (Beolan) I, Earl of Ross until the death of Uilleam O’Beolan (Beolan) III, Earl of Ross in 1372

Be careful the MP of Hugh we are looking at doesn't seem to be connected to the Clan Ross progenitor, Fearchar Mac an t-Sagairt, Earl of Ross, but to a duplicate profile of him, so more merging to do.

Hugh marries Maud, the 8th child of http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/SCOTLAND.htm#RobertBrusdied1304A

In Maud's entry Medlands refers to Hugh as "HUGH de Ross, son of WILLIAM de Ross Earl of Ross & his wife Eupheme --- ". Clearly they are using "de Ross" as surname.

O'Beolan is not used on Medlands at all.

Difference between an English name and a Gaelic name.

... Which is why we need to fill in the multiple language modules.

Am i reading Cawley correctly in that "de Ross" is indeed an English surname?

Re-reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearchar,_Earl_of_Ross#Origins for the fourth or fifth time i release that who ever wrote that passage is explaining that the connection between Farquhar and the O'Beolan family is based on the idea that the "priest" of Farquhar's patronym "mac in tSagairt" was a reference to the abbots of St. Maelrubha at Applecross in Ross-shire which was a hereditary position of the Ó Beólláin family.

HOWEVER the wikipedia author then goes on to explain that the association of Farquhar and the abbey at Applecross is very weak and suggests he could indeed have come from the other side of Ross-shire.

So if there is no association between Farquhar and Applecross there is no link to the O'Beolan family.

"Am i reading Cawley correctly in that "de Ross" is indeed an English surname?"

I think it would be safer to say that Cawley is using "de Ross" as the modern place holder, whether English is an appropriate term or not I may be getting overly hung up on.

I am definitely leaning towards using "de Ross" in the Geni Default Surname field.

Comparing Cawley and Anon (ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearchar,_Earl_of_Ross#Origins) regarding "O'Beolan" brings me to https://archive.org/stream/liberpluscardens07plusuoft#page/270/mode...

which in among a lot of latin that i cant fathom mentions "Hugo comes Rossensis" but nothing about "O'Beolan" as claimed by Anon with reference to Gordon. What i cannot work out of Liber is what it actually is, it is published 1877, much later than Gordon but is it a transcript of something older? The latin implies so.

Actually the reference to Gordon is this section https://archive.org/stream/genealogicalhist00gord#page/46/mode/1up
which describes the same event as "Hugh Builton, Erle of Rosse".

So while this adds another AKA for Hugh it seems to blow a rather large hole in the argument for using "O'Beolan"

well at least i can answer one of my own questions "... the Liber Pluscardensis is a history of Scotland which borrows heavily from the writings in the Scotichronicon and Fordun and was penned in Pluscarden in 1461 at the behest of the Abbot of Dunfermline."

So assuming the 1877 version is faithful to the original there is again no connection to the O'Beolan family here.

With some translation from yours truely Gordon on page 36 states:

"... where you may observe, that the Lord of Balnagown his surname should not be Ross, seeing as there was never any Earl of Ross by that surname; rather the Earls of Ross were first of the surname of Builton, then they were Leslies..."

https://archive.org/stream/genealogicalhist00gord#page/36/mode/1up/...

I don't want to spend much time here, but maybe it would help to understand a few things.

If "Hugh Beolan, Earl of Ross" is recorded as one of the slain at the battle of Halidon Hill (as mentioned above), then that should settle at least part of the debate about his name. Whether or not he was entitled to the name O'Beolan, he apparently had it.

Cawley is not in the habit of using placeholder surnames. When he says "Hugh de Ross", we can assume that Hugh or one of his near relatives also appears in contemporary records with that surname. Probably some early reference somewhere says Hugonis de Ross, and that's been translated into English as Hugh de Ross, but it's also possible that all the surviving evidence calls him Hugonis comitis de Ross and in the absence of any other surname (at this period) he would be Hugh de Ross. You'd have to do a compete search of all references to know exactly what is going on.

It's not uncommon in this period for prominent men to have both a Gaelic surname and an "English" (really Scots) surname. The English names are almost always territorial (de Ross) and the Gaelic names are almost always genealogical (O'Beolan). It wasn't worth the time of the clerks in central government to figure out the Latin for outlandish names like O'Beolan, because in their view those weren't real surnames at all, just a kind of tribal nickname. There is nothing odd about the idea that this guy was Aodh O'Beolan and at the same time Hugh de Ross.

Names like mac Uilleam are bynames, which is why we don't capitalize the mac. In the great Gaelic north everyone in the district potentially had the same surname because they were supposedly all descended from the same famous ancestor (Beolan). Only the great men actually used those clan names. Everyone else, and the great men as well, used bynames for everyday purposes of identification.

When you run across fleeting mentions that someone doubts the traditional genealogy, remember to look closely. They could be right, but there are always people looking to make a name for themselves by challenging the orthodox view.

BTW. am I the only one getting a laugh out of seeing on the MP that Hugh's religion was Scottish?

I hadn't realized that was a thing, but it certainly describes some of my chums ;)

On a completely different note "4th Earl of Ross" is not correct, it would be if Farquhar was the 1st Earl of Ross but he most definitely was not. There seem to have been at least two earls prior to Farquhar.

Cawley states:

"The earldom of Ross was first created in 1162 by Malcolm IV King of Scotland in favour of Floris III Count of Holland who had married his sister, but withdrawn from him. It was then granted to Malcolm MacEth, probably illegitimate son of Alexander I King of Scotland. After his death in 1168, it was more than fifty years before the earldom was granted again, to Ferquhard MacTaggart. "

So Hugh should either be denoted as "6th Earl of Ross" or just "Earl of Ross". I think 6th would cause too much confusion for people used to seeing him on other sites as 4th so dropping the numbering system all together would be my preference.

We could drop the numbering system, but I think 4th Earl is defensible. These old titles have many different numbering systems, depending on which peerage expert did the counting and people were considered in law to be original grantees and which were considered to be heirs of their predecessor.

My preference would be that someone check Scots Peerage and see what numbering they use.

Do just a tiny bit of poking around even though I said I wasn't going to get involved -- here is the contemporary evidence for the surname de Ross:

Excellentissimo principi ac domino suo Reuerendissimo domino Roberto dei gratia Regi Scottorum et suo bono consilio vester humilis nepos Willielmus comes de Ross sub hac forma conqueritur videlicet quod quondam bone memorie dominus meus Rex predecessor vester domino Waltero dc Lesly militi dedit omnes terras meas et tenementa et eciam fratris mei Hugonis de Ross ...

Edinburgh, 24 June 1371

https://archive.org/stream/anebrevecronicle1850ross/anebrevecronicl...

Justin Durand are you suggesting i am trying to make a name for myself? Robert Gordon's been dead for 400 years so is unlikely to have much ambition left!

The O'Beolan connection seems to originate with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Reeves_(bishop), unless Builton (as per Gordon) is some Olde Englishe spelling variation?

http://www.thepeerage.com/p468.htm#i4672

Farquhar considered 1st Earl of Ross

LOL. Not you, Alex. I'm thinking of this line from the Wikipedia article about Fearchar -- "The historian Alexander Grant has recently challenged this theory ...", meaning the theory of Reeves and Skene.

Go back to basics here. Robert Gordon (1580-1656) says, "Hugh Beolan, Earl of Ross" is recorded as one of the slain at the battle of Halidon Hill."

I read this to mean that Hugh himself used the surname Beolan, so the idea that there is a connection goes back to his lifetime (14th century). It doesn't have to be right, but it would still be his name if he used it. If Gordon is making up the citation, the idea still goes back further than Reeves and Skene.

But the argument isn't that the Rosses are not descended from the Beolan family, but that Reeves and Skene are wrong when they say that Fearchar was from the family of O'Beolans who were hereditary abbots of St. Maelrubha. Duncan's quibble (according to Wikipedia, I haven't checked) is that it would be more logical to think Fearchar belonged to the family who were keepers of the shrine of St. Duthac. This seems to be because an early history of the family says Fearchar came from Tain, which St. Duthac's shrine is located. Maybe Duncan also thinks the Tain family were not O'Beolans but Wikipedia doesn't say so.

If Hugh called himself Beolan, I have a hard time accepting modern arguments that he was wrong about his name.

WHOA!

Justin, Gordon says no such thing, he says "Hugh Builton, Erle of Rosse". i even gave you a hyperlink to the exact page.
Are you saying that Gordons "Builton" is the same as Reeves' "O'Beolan" because i cant find any information about anything/one named Builton other than modern construction companies.

http://www.thepeerage.com/p10790.htm#i107897

Hugh may have had a third wife.

Oh - ThePeerage! :-P''''''

I wouldn't trust that as far as I could throw it. (And being just pixels, it can't be thrown.)

Alex. Yes, Builton = Beolan. Are you disputing that? There is a body of continuous scholarship from his time to the present that makes the equation. If you're seriously denying it, then we need to back up quite a bit and start over with a basic review of what everyone has been saying all these hundreds of years.

Maven, I agree about ThePeerage, but in this case the idea that Fearchar was the 1st Earl goes back to a tradition that he began a new (male) line of Earls. Not backed by evidence, I don't think, but the basic idea has always been that he inherited his right to it from his mother or grandmother. See, for example, Frank Adam:

https://books.google.com/books?id=_U0Ii-Om3EwC&pg=PA341&lpg...

The Scots peerage; founded on Wood's edition of Sir Robert Douglas's peerage of Scotland; containing an historical and genealogical account of the nobility of that kingdom by Paul, James Balfour, Sir, 1846-1931, ed. dn
Published 1904. Vol Vll, 1910. "The Ancient Earls of Ross" (pages 230-244)

https://archive.org/stream/scotspeeragefoun07paul#page/236/mode/1up

Hugh, fourth Earl of Ross. Married twice, issue by both wives.

1. Lady Maud Bruce, sister of the King.
2. Margaret, daughter of Sir David Graham of Old Montrose, who survived him and married again, in 1341, to John de Barclay.

On page 235 of TSP he is referred to as Sir Hugh de Ross, knight.

http://www.stirnet.com/genie/data/british/qr/ross01.php

gives same information as The Peerage.

Justin,
Not disputing anything, just asking questions. Remember that 3 days ago i had never even heard of the Earls of Ross.

http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/SCOTTISH%20NOBILITY%20LATER.htm#_To...