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Back in June of 2003 Rick Stirling received the following email from Steve Stirling about the origins of the surname Stirling. It provides some very interesting information. If you have more information about the orgins of the name, please send it along so we may add to the growing historical database. Cheers. (Edited for content) What started me on this binge for the etymology of our mutual last name was a visit to my sister's home last night. She and another sister of mine just returned from an over-seas trip which included a visit to Stirling Castle. One of the booklets they brought back has on its cover an aegis with the Latin motto "Nemus et hoc in se Castrum continet Strivelinse." As former passionate student of the language, I couldn't resist the urge to translate it. Using an old dictionary, (one without declensional paradigms, unfortunately) I was able to translate everything except for the last word. Then it occurred to me that Strivelinse was the genitive (possessive) form of a surname. The root had to be Strivelin and Strivelin had to be the Latin version Stirling. The motto thus translates loosely as, "Stirling Castle controls this grove and all herein." Then I did a search through Dogpile on Strivelin. Dogpile returned both rickster and clanstirling websites. I was delighted with the contents of both sites. And since the linguistic epiphany, I have reached a further conclusion. That the final "g" in the modern version of the name means that the original Latin surname would have been Strivelins, since only an "e" would be necessary to render it into the genitive inflection. I admit I am more of a dilettante rather than an expert but I did study linguistics and I did study, if only superficially, European languages. All continental languages use some variation of the same alphabet used by the Romans. Some of those languages use letters of similar shape to mean different phonemes. And there are some languages which use the same scripted or printed letter to denote completely different varieties of vowels and consonants. So how does the final "S" in Strivelins become a final "G" in Stirling? I suspect that its by the same process as occurs in contemporary German. The pronunciation of words like "Leipzig" and "fertig" is subject to dialectic variation. Some dialects pronounce them as exactly as English speakers would. But in the formal German that I studied, when "I" precedes "G" in the final syllable of a word, it is rendered as "SH." And by that process over time, Strivelins, with complete eventual dropout of the "ue" or "ve" diphthong, could become Sterling, Sturling, Stirling, etc. Kinda makes you say GEE--It does me anyway. I hope I haven't bored you with this pedantry. Thanks for all the information your website will provide.
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