A Scots patronymic, ‘son of Will’ — one of the honest majority of Ulster surnames that arrived complete with the Plantation and never passed through Irish at all.
Scottish Origin · Root meaning ‘son of William’
Wilson is a straightforward Scots-English patronymic, ‘son of Will’, and unlike most names on this list it never had a Gaelic form to translate or absorb. It came to Ireland in numbers during the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century, brought by Lowland Scots settlers into Antrim, Down and beyond.
Four centuries on, a name with no Irish sept behind it is, in Ulster, as settled and as local as any that has one — belonging honestly, not by invention.
Irish form: (no Gaelic form)
