: Wilson Bardsley’s A Dictionary of English and Welsh
: Surnames, has "Caddell" as an undated
: variant of "Caldwell": "de
: Caldewella," 1195, "de Caldewell,"
: 1379, "Cauldwell," 1381, et seq. The
: Domesday Book of 1086 constitutes the first census of
: England. [Domesday Book, English & Latin, text and
: translation edited by John Morris. Chichester:
: Phillimore, 1975-1986, vol. 27.] Written in Latin, it
: describes a hamlet of Caldewelle (today spelled in
: English, Caldwell) in the southwest region of
: Derbyshire, within the Repton and Gresly Hundred (an
: Anglo-Saxon administrative unit that, along with the
: "shire," survived the Norman Conquest). The
: Domesday book states: "In Caldewelle, Aelferic
: had 2 c. [caraucates] of and taxable. Land for 2
: ploughs. Now in Lordship 1 plough; 6 villagers with 1
: plough. Value before 1066 and now, 20 s. King William

Here's the problem with the Doomsday book theory; William only went as far north in England as the Ribble River, which was the border between England and Scotland at the time. That's about 185 miles from Ayr.

Therefore records in the Doomsday book would not show Caldwells, or anybody else in Scotland, only England.

: the name of Caldewaellen. See, Kenneth Cameron, The
: Place Names of Derbyshire, Cambridge, Eng., Cambridge
: University Press, 1959, p. 625. Aelfric (c. 955-1010)
: was considered the most famed of Anglo-Saxon prose
: writers. The earliest known occupant of this hamlet
: designated by full name is found in The Pipe Rolls of

Pipe Rolls same as the Doomsday Book - England, not Scotland.

: 1195 (Dec. Comm. 3 vols. 1833-44), listed as Adam de
: Caldewelle. Burton Abbey was founded as a Benedictine
: monastery by Wulfuric Spot during the reign of King
: Æthelred the Unready (978-1016 A.D.). See discussion,

That's all fine, but in 911, the Viking raider, Rollo, settled in the lower Seine basin. It became Norman's Land, or Normandy. "Norman", of course, meaning "men from the north".

The first Viking raid on Scotland was in 794 or 795. Robert I the Bruce claimed Norman ancestry, and he was from around Paisley. Some of the largest Viking settlements were in the Shetland islands. Paisley was founded in the 500s.

In the 700s, the Viking word for "cold" was "kald" or "skald", and the word for well, "well".

All interesting in the context of England, but does not disprove Scottish ancestory nor does it even take Scotland into account.

: The Caldwells of Derbyshire may have traveled by boat
: to the Caldwells of Yorkshire. The Domesay Book
: mentions several other Caldwell settlements in England
: as of 1086.

The use of surnames appears to have begun in France about the year 1000, and surnames were introduced into Scotland through the Normans a little over one hundred years later. The first official reference to the practice is from a general council held at Forfar in 1061, during the reign of Malcolm Ceannmor (1057- 1093). Malcolm directed his chief subjects to create surnames from the names of their territorial possessions.

The first people in Scotland to take fixed surnames were the nobles and great landowners, who called themselves, or were called by others, after the lands which they possessed. Clearly many individuals, and ultimately families, could originate in the same place, and take their names from it, without being related to each other.

"Caddell", for example, is a variant of Calder and may have derived from an ancestor resident in Calder in West Lothian, Calder in Lanarkshire, Calder in Nairnshire, or Calder in Caithness.

It is even possible that "Caldwell" may have even been derived from "Caddell" - I don't think so, but ya just never know.

Caldwell in Scotland is much more predominant than in England that it seems to be a hard stretch to have Caldwell originating there.

I'd love to see some of Randy's sources and citations tying John Caldwell m. Alice Alston in Worcester, England to William of Straiton. Then again, he tried to convince me once that the Barbarossa from the Caldwell Myths was the German King a.k.a. Frederick I. I didn't realize that Frederick I born in 1123 was a pirate on the Mediterranean in the 1500s, but if you're stretching, why not?