Inter-ethnic marriage patterns in late sixteenth-century Shetland

Local Population Studies

Volumn , Issue 80, 2008, Pages 22-38

  Knooihuizen, Remco ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNIC GROUP; ETHNICITY; IMMIGRANT; LANGUAGE; MARRIAGE;

ARTICLE; ETHNOLOGY; HISTORY; LANGUAGE; LINGUISTICS; MARRIAGE; MIGRATION; NOMENCLATURE; UNITED KINGDOM;

EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION; HISTORY, 16TH CENTURY; LANGUAGE; LINGUISTICS; MARRIAGE; NAMES; SCOTLAND;

EURASIA; EUROPE; SCOTLAND; SHETLAND; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 45349108120     PISSN: 01432974     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. G. Donaldson, 'The Scots settlement in Shetland', in D.J. Withrington ed., Shetland and the outside world 1469-1969 (Oxford, 1983), 8-19.
2. On the role of immigration in the language shift, see R. Knooihuizen, 'The Norn-to-Scots language shift in Shetland: another look at sociohistorical evidence', Northern Studies, 39 (2005), 105-17.
3. K. MacKinnon, 'Migration, family and education in Gaelic policy perspective' (2006), available from http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/celtic/ poileasaidh/migration-family-education-Holyrood.pdf (accessed February 2007).
4. C.B. Paulston, 'Social factors in language maintenance and language shift', in J.A. Fishman ed., The Fergusonian impact: in honor of Charles A. Ferguson on the occasion of his 65th birthday (Berlin, 1986), 2, 493-511.
5. Some more detailed studies exploring the role of exogamy in language shift are G. Stevens, 'Nativity, intermarriage, and mother-tongue shift', American Sociological Review, 50 (1985), 74-83;
6. V. de Klerk, 'The cross-marriage language dilemma: his language or hers?', International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 4 (2001), 197-216;
7. and K.K.Y. Cheng, 'Language shift and language maintenance in mixed marriages: a case study of a Malaysian-Chinese family', International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 161 (2003), 81-90.
8. Donaldson, 'Scots settlement', 10.
9. The study of names in the court book appears in Donaldson, 'Scots settlement';
10. that of names in the 1577 document in T. Schmidt, 'Torwald of Hoverstad and Williame Makriche: the complexity of the names of the "Commownis and Inhabitantis of Yetland" in 1577', in P. Gammeltoft and B. Jørgensen eds, Names through the looking glass: Festschrift in honour of Gillian Fellows-Jensen (Copenhagen, 2006), 254-74.
11. Donaldson, 'Scots settlement', 11-12.
12. Fundamental publications in this research paradigm are U. Weinreich, W. Labov and M.I. Herzog, 'Empirical foundations for a theory of language change', in W.P. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel eds, Directions for historical linguistics: a symposium (Austin, 1968), 95-188;
13. and with reference to multilingual societies, C.A. Ferguson, 'Diglossia', Word, 15 (1959), 325-40.
14. J.A. Fishman's work on language use in the Yiddish community in the United States is another important contribution: for example, 'The sociology of language: an interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society', in Fishman ed., Advances in the sociology of language (Den Haag, 1972), 1, 217-380.
15. W. Labov, 'The social stratification of English in New York City' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1966).
16. See for example J.A. Fishman, Reversing language shift: theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages (Clevedon, 1991).
17. Language maintenance is an issue both because of a language's cultural value in society and because of the added value of language diversity for linguistics: see, for example, D. Crystal, Language death (Cambridge, 2000).
18. This version of events is the essentials of a model of language shift and death published in H.J. Sasse, 'Theory of language death', in M. Brenzinger ed., Language death: factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa (Berlin/New York, 1992), 7-30.
19. It is based on previous research on language shift and death in Scottish Gaelic and the Albanian dialects of Greece, but has since been shown to apply to Manx Gaelic as well: G. Broderick, Language death in the Isle of Man: an investigation into the decline and extinction of Manx Gaelic as a community language in the Isle of Man (Tübingen, 1999). This suggests the model may be more widely applicable.
20. M. Ehala, 'An evaluation matrix for ethnolinguistic vitality', to appear in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of Minority Languages, Trieste 2005, available from http://www.tlu.ee/fil/ehala/ pdf/EthnolinguisticvitalityTrst.pdf;
21. A. de Swaan, 'Endangered languages, sociolinguistics, and linguistic sentimentalism', European Review, 12 (2004), 567-80.
22. Paulston, 'Social factors', 498-9.
23. J. Millard, 'A new approach to the study of marriage horizons', Local Population Studies, 28 (1982), 10-31;
24. A. Hunter, 'Marriage horizons and seasonality: a comparison', Local Population Studies, 35 (1985), 38-42;
25. C. Lemercier and P.A. Rosental, '"Pays" ruraux et découpage de l'espace: les résaux migratoires dans la région lilloise au milieu du XIXe siècle', Population (French edition), 55 (2000), 691-726;
26. A.J. Pain and M.T. Smith, 'Do marriage horizons accurately measure migration? A test case from Stanhope parish, County Durham', Local Population Studies, 33 (1984), 44-8;
27. R.A. Bellingham, 'The use of marriage horizons to measure migration: some conclusions from a study of Pocklington, East Yorkshire in the late eighteenth century', Local Population Studies, 44 (1990), 52-5.
28. M. Poulain and M. Foulon ('L'immigration flamande en Wallonie: évaluation à l'aide d'un indicateur anthroponymique', Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis = Revue belge d'histoire contemporaine, 12 (1981), 205-44) showed that such onomastic evidence can be a reliable indicator of migration, although their study was restricted to a very salient marker of Dutch-language origin, that is surnames starting with the preposition van.
29. The court book of Shetland, 1602-1604, ed. by G. Donaldson (Edinburgh, 1954);
30. The court book of Orkney and Shetland, 1612-1613, ed. by R.S. Barclay (Edinburgh, 1962);
31. The court book of Orkney and Shetland, 1614-1615, ed. by R.S. Barclay (Edinburgh, 1967);
32. Court book of Shetland, 1615-1629, ed. by G. Donaldson (Lerwick, 1991);
33. Commisariot Record of Orkney and Shetland: Register of Testaments, ed. by F.J. Grant (Edinburgh, 1904).
34. Foula population data from P. Razzell, The conquest of smallpox: the impact of inoculation on smallpox mortality in eighteenth-century Britain (Sussex, 1997), 118.
35. J.A. Clyde ed., Hope's Major Practicks 1608-1633 (Edinburgh, 1937), 1, 285-335 describes the regulations pertaining to wills and succession. This particular stipulation is on p. 312: 'No person may have an heir but he who is either a prelate, burgess, or in fee undenuded', that is, someone who holds something in fee - lands, right, heritage or office - but who has not resigned it.
36. Clyde ed., Hope's Major Practicks, 285-6: 'Ane womane being frie, and not subject to no man, may make ane testament, bot, if she be under the pouer of her husband, she may not dispoun upon any goods without his consent.' As in only 10 per cent of cases does the wording suggest that the husband died before the wife, we may conclude that husbands typically did consent to their wives making their own wills.
37. This statistic is obtained by cross-referencing the date for the execution of the wills of Shetland clergymen with information about their deaths in H. Scott ed., Fasti ecclesiae scoticanae: the succession of ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation, 7 (Edinburgh, 1928). The delay of eight years was in the case of Euphane Cranstane, wife of Nicol Whyte, minister of Dunrossness. There is no evidence that women's testaments were only executed after their husbands' death, as Whyte was known to have been alive eight years after Cranstane's testament was executed.
38. The term 'linguistic allegiance' is from B. Sandnes, 'Personnavn i kontakt i de skandinaviske vikingtidskoloniene', Studia Anthroponymica Scandinavica, 22 (2004), 43-58, on p. 45.
39. On Shetland naming practices, see also Hermann Pálsson, 'Norse personal names in early Shetland', in H. Cheape ed., Tools and traditions: studies in European ethnology presented to Alexander Fenton (Edinburgh, 1993), 247-55.
40. B. Sandres, Fra Starafjall til Starling Hill: dannelse og utvikling av norrøne stedsnavn på Orknøyene (Trondheim, 2003);
41. 'What is Norse, what is Scots in Orkney place-names?', in P. Gammeltoft, C. Hough and D. Waugh eds, Cultural contacts in the North Atlantic region: the evidence of names (Lerwick, 2005), 173-80.
42. Sandnes, 'Personnavn i kontakt i de skandinaviske vikingtidskoloniene', 46-7.
43. On the Danicisation of Faroese names, see J.H.W. Poulsen, Mál í mæti: greinasavn eftir Jóhan Hendrik W. Poulsen útgivio í sambandi vio sjeyti ára føoingardag hansara 20. juni 2004 (Tórshavn, 2004), 135.
44. The term 'British' here could be argued to be an anachronism, and some may prefer to describe this as 'English' and 'Scottish' instead. However, it is difficult to tell whether the British names are English or Scottish due to England and Scotland's shared and intertwined (linguistic) histories. For the purposes of this study, it is less important to distinguish between English and Scots names than it is to oppose Anglo-type names against Scandinavian type names.
45. G.F. Black, The surnames of Scotland: their origin, meaning, and history (New York, 1946).
46. Available at http://www.spatial-literacy.org/UCLnames/default.aspx (accessed September 2006-January 2007).
47. W.D.H. Sellar and A. Maclean, The Highland clan MacNeacail MacNicol): a history of the Nicolsons of Scorrybreac (Waternish, 1999), 28.
48. Outside Shetland, Thomason also occurs in Lancashire, and Simonson in County Durham. However, it is unlikely that a large-scale migration from Northern England to Shetland took place in this period, and the English occurrences are ignored for the sake of this argument.
49. Donaldson, 'Scots settlement', 10.
50. An alternative analysis with a stricter method of assigning ethnicity to names left only 151 marriages, or roughly half of the data, as opposed to the current four-fifths. Because there is not much data and the data may not be representative to begin with, it was considered preferable to use the method that left a larger part of the data intact, rather than feign a greater accuracy of results that will only ever be tentative.
51. This is known in sociolinguistics as the 'sex prestige pattern': see, for example, R.A. Hudson, Sociolinguistics (Cambridge, 1996), 195-9.
52. Donaldson, 'Scots settlement', 13.