Matthew Hammond, the editor of the interesting but disparate chapters in Personal Names and Naming Practices in Medieval Scotland, has wisely used the first chapter as an introduction to the ways in which the Scottish names both resemble and differ from those of the rather more intensely studied English ones. He lists the thirty masculine names that occur most frequently in the sources that have been recorded in the databases of the People of Medieval Scotland project of which he was a co-creator and to which references are made, notably in chapters 3 to 8. A first glance at the list printed on page 4 reveals its close resemblance to the lists that I have made during my studies of names recorded in medieval England, and where most of the names reflect those current among English and Anglo-French families after the Norman Conquest. On this list, it is at positions 18, 19, and 21 of “Patrick,” “David,” and “Andrew,” respectively, that the patron saints of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland appear, while the influence of Scottish royalty and nobility account for the occurrences of “Malcolm” at 22, “Duncan” at 24, and “James” at 29. Hammond also includes on page 6 a list of the twenty-two most frequently attested masculine Gaelic names, beginning with the hagiophoric “Malcolm” in first place and ending, surprisingly, with the Scandinavian name Somerled (in Gaelic form Somairle). The reason why this name of Nordic origin is not further discussed is explained on page 55. Feminine names are by no means ignored in this volume, but they naturally occur much less frequently in records than do masculine ones in the medieval period.

Readers cannot expect to find here alphabetical treatments of all Scottish names that can compare with that useful book in dictionary form published by George F. Black in 1946. Hammond points out on page 12 that subsequent research by G. W. S. Barrow and others has naturally revealed mistakes in Black that have been pointed out in the present work. The best aid for a present-day searcher for onomastic information about individual names here will be to seek information in the substantial index of names running from Aaron to Ysouda (269–90).

Readers with a basic knowledge of the several languages involved will of course want to read Hammond's book from cover to cover, but the less ambitious will find it useful to refer to the many tables, which are listed after the contents. For the frequency of occurrence of Gaelic names occurring in the Annals of Ulster, for example, see table 1.3 (36–39), while table 3.2 (43) shows the top 144 most frequently occurring names of all types found in Scottish Charters in the People of Medieval Scotland databases in alphabetic and numerical order with indication of their linguistic origins.

Hammond has devoted chapter 4 to the development of Mac surnames in the Gaelic world, and I found this particularly useful. He establishes a coherent chronology for the development of this surname form from the earlier Irish Ua, where Ua means “grandson” and Ua-Ruairc is a style or title rather than a surname, through a period in which the term Mac meic means “son of the son of” until a period in the early thirteenth century, when, on the Scottish side of the Irish Sea, the abbreviated form Mac-X becomes used as a surname form (103–18). That the same development also took place gradually in eastern Scotland is demonstrated in the chronologically ordered list of individuals with names including mac (132–42).

The next four chapters treat names rather more straightforward to classify. In chapter 6, Valeria Di Clemente treats masculine given names of Germanic origin occurring in the Ragman Roll from 1296 and provides an annotated list of names, most of which represent continuations of traditional ones. In chapter 7, Thomas Owen Clancy and Hammond discuss literary personal names in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scotland, mainly borrowed from Roman, French, Brittonic, and Gaelic literature. Here it is important to note the practice of equivalence naming. This had already been explained in chapter 3, where, for example the name Archibald is used for Gilla Espoic without any obvious equivalence between the names (47). Later in the volume, the twelfth-century lord of Galloway is referred to as both Lochlann and Roland (169). The intention would seem to have been to provide a Latin-friendly name equivalent for a name of more obscure origin. In the middle of the twelfth century in Scotland, there was a sudden increase in the number of personal names of Old Testament origin, which is discussed in chapter 8. Jewish names are of rare occurrence in pre-Norman England or Ireland, and the analysis of potential Old Testament names occurring between 1093 and 1286 shows that there is no evidence for the presence of Jews in Scotland before 1286. Israelite names may show Norman and Breton influence but most probably reflect the work of church reformers or local cults. Chapter 9 is concerned with Scottish saints and personal names in the later Middle Ages, when the nobility, clergy, wealthy merchants, and craft organizations were responsible for the founding of shrines or chantries and the marking of feast days in a form of “liturgical nationalism,” as well as the growth of the cult of Ninian of Whithorn (217).

The concluding chapter 10 is devoted to saints in the names of late medieval Argyll. Although fascinating, it sits there rather uncomfortably, since this study of surnames, particularly those containing Gilla or Máel, emphasizes the link between the saint and the place and the saint and the family. The combination of the place-name element Cill- and a hagiophoric personal name, as admitted on page 228, requires more incisive investigation.