MCGLASHAN
Recorded variant spellings include Mc Glashan, Mcglashan
McGlashan is a surname of strictly Scottish provenance, derived ultimately from a Gaelic patronymic. The name records appear as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, with documentary evidence such as a witness called Iain Mc Glassan in the Highland Papers of 1515 and John McGlassan in the Lamont papers of 1519.
Mac Gille Easbuig is the reconstructed Gaelic form of the surname. The element Mac means “son of”, Gille translates as “servant”, and Easbuig is the Gaelic word for “bishop”. Consequently the literal sense of the name is “son of the bishop's servant”, denoting an ancestor who served a bishop or was associated with ecclesiastical service in the Middle Ages.
An alternative explanation found in the historical record treats the name as a diminutive of M' Glaisein, itself a shortened form of M' Ghille ghlais. Here the personal element glas means “grey, green or blue” and the suffix ‑an is a diminutive. Thus it may have originally signified “son of the grey lad”. This variant is documented in early archival records and is one of the earliest recognisable spellings of the surname.
Throughout Scotland the surname has manifested in several orthographic variants due to regional dialects and the process of Anglicisation. Common forms cited by researchers are MacGlashan, McGlashing, MacLashan, McGlashun, Glashen and MacGilleglas. In Ireland the surname appears in the form Mac Glasain, which is also Anglicised as Greene. This Irish presence is believed to have arisen during the Ulster Plantation of the sixteenth century.
The earliest London record of the name is a christening dated 17 June 1770 at St Marylebone, where Elizabeth, daughter of William and Elizabeth McGlashan, was baptised. A name similar in construction, Mulmory M'Glassen, is noted in a 1500 genealogical deduction concerning the Rose clan of Kilravock, indicating that spellings of the name were already varied in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
During the Highland Clearances of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many bearers of the McGlashan surname were displaced from their ancestral lands. Mass emigration then carried the name across the Atlantic and to the Southern Hemisphere, where it settled in communities of the United States, Canada and Australia. While the surname remains comparatively uncommon, it is nevertheless found in regions that historically received Scottish newcomers.
In summary, the McGlashan surname carries a clear Gaelic origin, a patronymic construction linked to ecclesiastical occupation, and a documented history stretching back to the early sixteenth century. Its various spellings and geographical dispersal illustrate the linguistic and migratory dynamics that have shaped Scottish surnames over the centuries.
Typical given names associated with the McGlashan surname
Male
- Alastair
- Andrew
- Craig
- David
- Greg
- Ian
- James
- Jim
- John
- Patrick
- Robert
- Scott
- Stuart
- William
Female
- Catherine
- Claire
- Elizabeth
- Emma
- Helen
- Joanne
- Laura
- Margaret
- Mary
- Susan
Similar and related surnames
Related and similar names are generated algorithmically based on the spelling, and may not necessarily share an etymology.
How to communicate the surname McGlashan in...
Braille
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Morse
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Semaphore
There are approximately 929 people named McGlashan in the UK. That makes it roughly the 7,799th most common surname in Britain. Around 14 in a million people in Britain are named McGlashan.
Famous people named McGlashan
- Jermaine McGlashan - Football player
- John McGlashan - Scottish football player (1967 to 2018)
- Peter A.S. McGlashan - (1831 to 1908)
Names and descriptions courtesy of Wikipedia, and may contain errors. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every famous person with this name.