Bye Names

Bye names, or nick names, were a very necessary part of the vocabulary in the fishing towns of Scotland, and, like the Moray Firth Tee-names, they often became hereditary. Family baptismal names were handed down in a fairly strict pattern from father to son and there could be a dozen men, most of them fishermen, with the same name. Some simple way of identifying each man was bound to develop, and few people resented the bye names.

In the East Neuk of Fife, some of the bye names were only variants of the family name. Dowgie was a specific member of the Doig family, and only one of the many Watsons was ever called Watsie, only one of the Carstairs men ever called Stairie.

Eck Mair and Ecksy Mair were never confused, nor Dauvit Smith and Davie Smith, while the only Daviesie in the town had no need of his surname for identification.

The names of the boats were sometimes used, as farm names are used, to identify their owners or skippers.

Star Jeems, Venus Peter, Carmi Tam and Acorn Mairt clearly singled out individual members of the old fishing families whose surnames were Watson, Murray, Anderson and Gardner.

But most of the bye names were reminders of some forgotten remark or incident:—
Bonny Socks
Pusk
The Lion
Williks
Pent the Cat
Patchy
The Kitlin
Crochet
The Mitten
Butty
Spades
Pidd’n
The Scoot
Spittie

The bye names were often known to fishermen in other ports along the coast, and a young man might identify himself as “Ane o’ the Williks”, or
“My father was Butty”. As East Neuk folk often said, ye can ca’ me onything ye like as long’s ye dinnae ca’ me ower (ca’ ower—knock over).

The bye name tradition still goes on, a mixture of the new and the hereditary. A much-changed East Neuk dialect is still in use, reflecting the changed methods of work, the changed ways of life ashore, the changed
linguistic influences. New words creep in, but before long their origins almost disappear as vowels and other sounds are changed to suit the speech habits and preferences of those who use them, just as words from France and Holland, Norway and Germany were changed in the past, and some day a pithy saying about a Diesel engine, a proverb about a purse-seine may entrench themselves
in the East Neuk vocabulary to be remembered with nostalgia by East Neuk folk in the far future.

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