Related History

The Picts

The Picts were a mysterious warrior people of ancient Britain. According to tradition, the Picts migrated from the shores of Brittany around the 15th century BC. They sailed northward to Ireland, but were refused permission to settle there by the ancient kings of that land. However, the Picts were granted permission to settle in the northeastern part of Scotland on the condition that each Pictish king marry an Irish princess, thus providing the Irish with a colony whose rulers were of royal Irish blood. This Pictish settlement was ruled by a matriarchal hierarchy.

The Boernicians

The Boernicians, who were a mixture of Scottish Picts, Angles, and Vikings, were one of the ancient clans of the Scottish-English borderlands. Considered to be the ancient founding peoples of the north, the Boernicians inhabited the tract of rugged territory that stretches from Carlisle in the west to Berwick in the east. In the 4th century,Scotland was composed of five different kingdoms, which were each home to a different race: the Gaels, Vikings, Picts, Britons, and Angles all held land, each had their own realm.

The Vikings

The Vikings, a Scandinavian people of astounding vitality, first began their invasion of Scotland in 794. However, the first wave of mass Viking migration occurred around 888, when King Harold of Norway defeated an unruly faction of northern clans who then abandoned their homeland. In search of a new place to live, they migrated to the sea-swept Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland under the leadership of their chief, Earl Sigurd. This settlement was permitted by the Scottish king and the kings of the Isle of Man, who allowed the Viking exiles to make their homes in the Orkney and Shetland Islands in return for a payment of 20,000 shillings. ​

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Clan Macneil Septs

Septs are families that followed another clan’s chief. These smaller septs would then be part of the chief's larger clan. A sept might follow another chief if two families were linked through marriage, or, if a family lived on the land of a powerful laird, they would follow him whether they were related or not.

If you have genealogical ties to the surname Macneil or any of Clan Macneil's Sept family names shown, you were born into the Clan Macneil and we’d love to have you join us!

Clan

A clan is a social group made up of a number of distinct branch-families that actually descended from, or accepted themselves as descendants of, a common ancestor. The word clan means simply children.

Mac or Mc (and sometimes O)

Scottish surnames frequently have the prefix Mac or Mc which means  “son of” The prefix was added either to the father’s first name, or nickname.  It could also be added to the father’s occupation.

There was a period of time known as the "Gaelic revival" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when there was a push to revive and use the Gaelic language in Scotland and Ireland. During this period, there was some encouragement to use Gaelic forms of names, rather than anglicized versions. However, it was not a ban on the use of Mac, Mc, or O' in names. It was more of a cultural movement and not enforced by law. Keep this in mind if you're doing family research since it likely had an impact on record keeping.

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