Airdrie

This is a very rare Scottish surname. Of locational origins and presumably from the town of Airdrie in Lanarkshire, believed to mean the island on the river, from the pre 5th century Celtic "Isar-eg", it is so uncommon that it is not listed in the famous book "Surnames of Scotland" by the late Professor George H. Black. This book until now, was believed to be 100% accurate with surnames of true Scottish origin. The first recording of this name that we have been able to find was is in the parish of Barony, now part of the city of Glasgow, Lanarkshire, in 1817, when on June 1st of that year Margorie Airdrie married a Hugh McWhirter. We have no trace of Mary's parents which may simply be because the registers are inaccurate, or because her name has been mis-spelt perhaps from the more popular Airie, or that Mary came from some other area that we have not been able to identify. A second recording of the name that we were able to find was in the county of Midlothian, when a Catherine Airdrie married Alexander Munro at Edinburgh Parish Church, city of Edinburgh, on June 10th 1864. Again we do not have the parents names. Locational surnames are often a problem because as with this one, they are usually "from" names. That is to say names that were given to people after they left their original homesteads to move elsewhere, often in search of work. It was an easy form of identification to call such a stranger by the name of his, or sometimes her, former home. Spelling over the centuries being at best rudimentary, and local dialects very thick, often lead to the development of "sounds like" names.