In the previous section, I reported that I had found some misspellings of our last name along with many legitimate phonetic variations of our surname. In all, I found 53 different spellings of our surname in the parish records. However, the two most common spellings by far were:

The seven next most common variants were: Wightone (56), Wightoun (39), Wightan (30), Wichton (23), Wightown (19), Wigtoun (18), and Wichtone (13). Most of the remaining 44 variants had 5 or less appearances. Here's the full list organized under three general types:.

How did I find all these variants?

The Scotsfind web site identified eight variants of the Wighton name that were in use in early Scotland. In addition, it listed Weighton as a separate, unassociated surname along with two variants of its own. The Surnames of Scotland reference book also had a few variants - some of which did not pan out at all. Using the combined lists as starting points, I conducted a number of wild card searches on the ScotlandsPeople database and these pulled up even more variants. When some wild card searches proved to be too unwieldy (far too many hits to scan), I'd take the variants that I had found and test them with slight alterations - for example, I tested Wightan, Wighten, Wightin, Wighton, and Wightun. Similarly Wichtan, Wichten, Wichtin, Wichton, and Wichtun and all the same variations for Weighton and Vighton. Finally, with the easy work done, I used the Latter Day Saints Database to search surname by surname through the birth and marriage records for all of the parishes where Wightons had been present - examining the V and W surnames to see if there might be some unusual spelling that I had not caught yet.

How do I know that these are all legitimate variants?

Having a compulsive organizational bent, as the ScotlandsPeople database spat out list after list of births and marriages for each variant I tested, I just naturally organized these data into parish "pictures" of our ancestors. Where we had an extensive presence, I'd make charts and try to connect family members by generation. In smaller parishes, I'd have at least a chronological list of births and marriages. So, as these parish pictures became more complete, it became easy to determine that what appeared to be two entirely different people were, in fact, the same person. For example, if a John Weightone and a John Wightonne had the same wife. Or, if a child born to John Wichtan fit in perfectly with four other children born to a John Wychton in a town where there were no other Wightons present. For example, I found the names Wichtoun, Wreighton, and Weighton all within a single family in Edinburgh in the 1630's. The names Wichtoun, Wighton, and Weighton appeared together in a Dundee family in the 1720s. Vighton, Wighton, and Wightan were found in an Abernyte family in the 1670s. Vighton, Vichtan, and Weighton appeared in a single Alyth family. Effectively, there were so many verifiable linkages within families that all of our variants could be proven to be eventually linkable to one of the three main variants - Wighton, Weighton and Wichton and these, in turn, were interlinked.

Sources

Black, George, F. (1946). Surnames of Scotland. Victoria Public Library.

Family Search: The Latter Day Saints Database (http://www.familysearch.org)

ScotlandsPeople Database (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/)

Scotsfind.com Website (http://www.scotsfind.org/surnames_access/surnames.pdf)

Statistical Accounts of Scotland (http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/)