My Cloyd Heritage

 

 

     To determine if Cloyd originates from MacLeod, we need to learn some things about the origin of the MacLeod surname first.  Descended from the Norse kings of the Isle of Man, the clan of MacLeod comprised two main branches, the MacLeods of Skye and the MacLeods of Lewis Scotland. The MacLeods of Skye established the seat at Dunvegan, which remains the chief's seat to this day.  In gaelic MacLeòid means Son of Leod, from the Norse word ljot, meaning ugly.  Gaelic names were spelled phonetically, based on the pronunciation of the spoken name. There would therefore be different spellings of a name.  Early spellings of M'Cloyd, M'Cloid, M'Cloyde, Macloyd, etc. were very common for this surname from the 14th to 17th Centuries.  Even some signatures of the clan MacLeod Chiefs will show these spellings.  Mac, Gaelic for "son", is the most common element of Scottish surnames. Mc is always an abbreviation of Mac, it also used to be abbreviated M' although this spelling is now not common.  I have uncovered substantial evidence from online research that will leave little doubt that Cloyd comes from MacLeoid, or rather that Macleoid came from M'Cloyd. 

     The following documents are some of my findings while searching in Google books.

I apologize for the method of displaying my findings, but to save space on this site I have attached several documents below.  Please view them in numerical order since this is how I laid everything out in the original documents so as to flow and make better sense.