One other question I have is the fact that the Abbott's and Yate's being Catholic point out anything in that era? (late 1700's early 1800's)
I have an Aunt who thinks the Abbott's origianted from Scotland. I have no way of confirming that!
Thanks again!
The surname Abbott is of course from the word abbot, the head of a monastery or convent. Abbots were priests and were celibate, so they could not found families. And even if they did enjoy a quick tryst under the table in a moonlit refectory with a scullery wench, it would have been unwise to make known the fact by labelling one’s illicit spawn in public registries.
Therefore Abbot/Abbott as a surname usually meant that the founding ancestor of the family had been the lay servant of an abbot or a male who worked on the estate or in the household of an abbot.
The Scottish Gaelic surname McNab or MacNab or Macnab means ‘son of the abbot.’
Concerning the etymology of MacNab, two questions arise.
First query: How did that n get in front of the ‘ab’ in MacNab? That’s because the Gaelic form of the name was mac an aba ‘son of the abbot.’
Second query: How could celibate abbots have offspring and thus found families? Unlike most other Catholic abbacies, those held by Celtic abbots were lay positions and the office was hereditary. In Glendochart, the MacNab homeland in Perthshire, Scotland, stood a great monastery built in the early Middle Ages where the first chiefs of the clan were lay abbots. Some Scottish families with the name Abbott are actually disgruntled MacNabs who, at several points in the long, troubled history of the clan, grew so angry at clan leaders that they changed their names, and translated MacNab back into English as Abbott!
