Maggie,
I will try to answer your questions:
1,2,3 &4. “Donn” in Gaelic means brown. When applied to a person, I think it meant brown hair but many people would have had brown hair so perhaps it also referred to complexion. At that time, in every day conversation, people did not use surnames, presumably because of the duplication of names. Just imagine how many John Mackays there would have been. Instead, they were referred to and identified by an “eke” name. In the parish register, the minister refers to them as “aliases”. These eke names took several forms, the principal ones being patronymics (e.g. son of X, or mac [father’s name] mhic [grandfather’s name]) and physical attributes (e.g. Donn/brown; Dubh/black; Ban/white/fair; Og/smaller/younger) Sometimes the eke name is retained for several generations and takes on the fuction of a family name, as was the case with Rob Donn. His father and brothers all had the eke name Donn. The siblings that I know of are: William, Donald, and Gilbert.
Two entries in the PR for 1765 might illustrate the point:
“Hugh Calder, alias Down, in Balamhulich, christened Mary”
“Gilbert Calder, alias Down, in Teagisgil, John”
(Gilbert was one of Rob’s brothers. I don’t know who Hugh was.)
The Gaelic used in the Durness Parish Register, and several other places, was mostly phonetic representations. For example “Down” appears to be fairly close to how “Donn” would be pronounced. However, I think Gaelic is difficult to represent phonetically and “Donn” might also be represented by “Don-yuh”, or somewhere between the two.
There were many Calders in the parish of Durness, and elsewhere in the North of Scotland. They were often called Ekel. I do not know whether they were Mackays but I doubt that they were descended from Aodh (from whom the clan gets its name). Then, again, neither were most “Mackays”. They just assumed the name when a surname became required. They would probably have been adherents of that clan at one time.
5. I do not think he was adopted by the Mackays. When he was a young lad, he was taken into the service of John Mackay of Claiseneach, or, as he was known in Gaelic, Iain mac Eachain ‘ic Iain, a cousin of the Chief. Iain lived at Muisel in Strathmore and was Manager of the chief’s cattle business. Rob Donn was a cowherd and lived at the main house among the servants.
6. Yes his wife’s name was Janet Mackay, daughter of Thomas Mackay. I do not know the marriage date. It would have been before the PR commenced.
7. My records are in a data base – FTM. I have not been able to discover how to extract certain parts of information and transmit them electronically, other than to someone who has compatible software. What do you use?
Ian
