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From: "David Ewing" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA-R1B1C7] The Dialog needs a little spark
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:52:44 -0600


Hooboy. At least Gene has clearly labeled the E-wing hooey as "Legend."
Whoever made up this ridiculous story must be laughing like the dickens that
we are still telling it to one another. I wrote a short article bearing on
this for the Journal of Clan Ewing a year or so ago, reviewing an old book
and talking a little of some better supported ideas about the origin of the
Ewing name. Here it is:

A History of Surnames of the British, by C. L'Estrange Ewen
Reviewed by David N. Ewing

Many of you have come across the preposterous legend that the Ewing name
originated as "E-wing," an abbreviation for the "Eagle Wing Clan," which was
supposed to have been established after some Celtic shepherds near Loch
Lomond rescued a child from an eagle's aerie. Evidently, it didn't occur to
whoever concocted this story that these folks wouldn't have been speaking
English. [In modern Gaelic eagle-wing would be iolar-sciathán, and in Cymric
it would be eryr-adain. Admittedly, I have no idea how Celtic languages
handle the genitive case and have ignored case altogether, but one would
really have to stretch to get E-wing out of either of these, I think.] This
reminds me of a probably apocryphal story about a Texas legislator, who is
reported to have argued in a debate about bilingual education, "If English
was good enough for our Lord Jesus Christ, it is good enough for our
children!" Now we have found what may be the definitive linguistic analysis
of the origin of the Ewing name by C. L'Estrange Ewen.

The website of Clan Ewing at www.ClanEwing.org has recently added a
transcription of Chapter
14<http://www.clanewing.org/documents/BritishIsleSurnames_Ewing.pdf>of
A History of Surnames of the British, by C. L'Estrange Ewen. (London,
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd. and New York, The Macmillan Co.,
1931, pp 352-365.) This is a rather interesting, extensively documented
resource on the origin of the Ewen/Ewing name. John D. McLaughlin brought
this to our attention and supplied an optical character recognition (OCR)
transcript. I found a copy of the book in the University of New Mexico
Library and edited the OCR transcript, trying to put in the diacritics and
Greek script as best I could. You can find this in the Ewing Reading Room
Section of the website, under Articles and Research Reports.

Evidently, C. L'Estrange Ewen was quite a prolific scholar and author in the
early part of the last century. In addition to this book, he has written
several works about subjects ranging from witches and pirates to
Shakespeare, as well as some genealogical treatises. I haven't been able to
turn up a biography of him, but he must have been quite a character. Let me
quote from his first paragraph to give you a taste of the writing:

"Having traced out step by step the evolution of the surname from the
personal description or address, examined the various processes of
derivation, and gained an insight into the deceptive results of orthographic
corruption, a possibly rash essay will now be made to reverse the operation,
and taking a modern name, to attempt the exemplification of a method of
working, whereby the geographical distribution, language, etymon, and
original signification is discovered."

This book is a musty, erudite adventure through the philological scholarship
of bygone days. As the title suggests, the book is about the history of
surnames in the British Isles. It speaks in exhaustive and exhausting
detail about the various ways in which surnames originated, as in physical
characteristics, occupations, place names, and genealogic connections, and
of the various linguistic sources of British names, including Celtic,
Germanic, Scandinavian and Norman. Along the way, it reviews some of the
history of Britain and its sundry visitors and invaders. It gives long
lists of names, both familiar and very, very strange. And it lists hundreds
of references to manuscripts dating back to the beginning of the written
word.

Chapter 14 is of particular interest to us, because in this chapter, Ewen
uses his own surname as an example for performing a comprehensive analysis
of a name and its variants, and he makes some rather remarkably educated
guesses about what the deep origin and original meaning of the name may be.
After reviewing and entertaining many hypotheses, Ewen finally suggests
that the name probably originated in the Celtic word for yew, a sort of tree
useful for making bows, and therefore may have been applied to
"bow-warriors" or archers, with the caveat that

"Nothing is more uncertain than the derivation of personal names, as the
opposing views of eminent scholars testify. The writer will therefore
pronounce no dogmatic opinion regarding the origin of Ewen or Owen, but will
merely record the impression, formed by a consideration of the cited
facts…"[etc.]

Whatever the case may be, if you haven't read Ewen's chapter and you think
you know what there is to know about the history of our name, you have
another thing coming. My jaw is still hanging slack in amazement at the
number of documents Ewen consulted, the number of libraries he must have
visited and the number of languages he must have been able to read to
research this work. I highly recommend his book to anyone who is interested
in learning the definition of "thorough."

If any of you should be interested to see my analysis of DNA evidence
bearing on the origin of the Ewing name, you can find this in the Journal of
Clan Ewing, Vol 13, No 3, August
2007<http://www.clanewing.org/DNA_Project/DNA_Articles/Document_YDNA_11.html>;,
which is available on-line at the website of Clan Ewing.

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