A Little History of the Beaton Surname

Beaton is a surname in the English language, which has multiple origins. One origin of the name is from the placename of Béthune, in Pas-de-Calais, France. Another derivation is from the mediaeval personal name Beaton, Beton, which is pet form of a short form of the names Bartholomew or Beatrice.Bartholomew is a masculine name, while Beatrice is a feminine name; the names are not etymologically related to each other. Another derivation of the surname Beaton is that it is an Anglicisation of the Gaelic Mac Beath. According to George Fraser Black, there were two families in the Inner Hebrides that Anglicised their surnames to Beaton. One such family were the MacBeths on Islay and Mull; the first record of the family is a Gaelic charter of Fercos Macbetha in about 1408. According to Black, the Beatons on Skye were related to the Bethunes from Fife.
The surname Beaton can be represented in Scottish Gaelic as Peutan (masculine form), and Pheutan (feminine form).

27 Jun 2016

The past few months I have been studying the Beaton/Bethune lines and have come to the conclusion there are two clans. Some researchers have them joined At the hip and has caused much confusion

Clan 1

There are the Beaton/Bethunes who stem from Fyfe and Angus, Scotland but they spread all over the country, This line have ties way back to the Baron of Bethune of France

Clan 2

The other line are the Medical Kindred from Skye a family of the first doctors as we know doctors today, who possibly came from Ireland, In short they adopted the name because its meaning was "son of life" Their original names was MacMeic-bethad.  There is a lot of confusion on my part as a lot of the names are in Gaelic, but they basically changed it to MacBeth  or MacBeth in its Scottish form and was last recorded in 1300s from then its pretty much been Beaton. Unfortunately some the Beaton/Bethune's  from Fyfe or Angus became doctors and moved to Skye as well so its hard to know who's who.

I am still studying these lines.

If you have any other interesting theories on the BEATON name please feel free to share.