Lamont

Lamont comes from the Irish and Scottish surname, and its use as a given name has been mainly confined to the U.S. The surname is derived from Lagman which was a given name used in medieval times. Lagman comes from the Old Norse combination of log ("law") and madhr ("man"). This gives a resulting meaning for Lamont of "lawman" or "law giver." Lamont began to appear in the U.S. top 1000 names list in the 1940's, and its popularity peaked in the 1970's--though it never was a really "popular" name, at any time. Use of the name has declined steadily since the 1970's, and in 2004 the name was still in the top 1000, but barely. The first thing many of us think of when we hear the name Lamont is that it was the name of Fred Sanford's son in the Redd Foxx television show, Sanford and Son.

Fearchar

Fearchar is a Gaelic name that means "dear man," from the elements fear (man) and char (dear.) This name shows up in the early histories of Scotland and Ireland, and anyone researching their Irish or Scottish genealogy is likely to run across it. The slightly more familiar name Farquhar is the English version of Fearchar, and became a surname, so if you hit a dead end in your genealogy search with either Fearchar or Farquhar, try broadening your search to include the other.

Heather

Most names can go into some category or another, or several categories in some cases. Examples include gem names like Ruby and Jasper, saint names, names that were surnames, and so on. One of those categories is flowers, or plants, and Heather is one of these names. Heather is a plant often associated with Scotland, and the heather page at Electric Scotland has some nice pictures of it, a great legend, and excellent information about the evolution of the word heather from Old Scottish to the present form. Actually that page probably contains more information about heather than anyone could ever need, but go there anyway for the legend and the pictures. It's very nice. The most famous Heather on the Internet is blogger Heather Armstrong, a.k.a. Dooce. And of course there's Heather Locklear, but Dooce is much more interesting. Really. Heather only started to be used regularly as a given name for baby girls in the 1930's, but had made it all the way to the top 10 in the 1970's. Its popularity has waned steadily since the 70's, but it is still in the top 300, so is certainly not out of use. The loss of popularity is almost certainly due to over-use (see the 1989 movie Heathers , with its clique of Heathers.)

Donald

Donald is a Scottish name that comes from the Gaelic name Domhnall. Since I'm working from several sources here that almost but don't quite agree on things, it appears to mean something like "almighty ruler of the world." This makes it an awesome name for a cat. The folks at Disney apparently thought it was also an excellent name for animated water fowl, and Donald Duck is probably one of the first mental associations people make with this name. Donald Trump also comes to mind--a good example of someone at least attempting to live up to his name. Donald is not as common as it was in the first half of the 20th century, but is still widely used. One reason for its continued popularity is that it is a versatile name. A child named Donald can also be called Don or Donnie.