These pages are intended to consolidate information on the FAIRBAIRN (and variant names) garnered from many sources, answers being sought for the following questions:

  • Where did the FAIRBAIRN name come from?
  • How many FAIRBAIRNs are there now?
  • How many were there?
  • Where are, and were, they?
  • How many different spellings of the name?
  • And are they all related?

The last question is gradually being answered by the companion FAIRBAIRN Surname DNA Project, where, 50+ kits so far, are showing that the majority of the Scottish Borders based FAIRBAIRN families are indeed related in some way.

Happy to include links to pedigrees, and to list researchers, we're all in this journey together, and so many people have already helped me over the years it seems only fair to return those favours.

So, if you want to help on this journey, do contact me via the link in the page footers.

For the answers to the above questions, keep checking back at the links on the left hand side of the pages.

 

 

Fairbairn News

Blog
  • Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

    — Abraham Lincoln
  • My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.

    — Cary Grant
  • Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

    — E. B. White
  • I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.

    — e. e. cummings
  • What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

    — Saint Augustine
  • Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

    — Mark Twain
  • If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

    — Henry David Thoreau
  • If two things look the same, look for differences. If they look different, look for similarities.

    — John Cardinal
  • In theory, there is no difference. In practice, there is.

    — Anonymous
  • Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

    — John Adams
  • People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

    — Abraham Lincoln
  • History - what never happened described by someone who wasn't there

    — ?Santayana?
  • What's a "trice"? It's like a jiffy but with three wheels

    — Last of the Summer Wine
  • Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened

    — Terry Pratchett
  • I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

    — Terry Pratchett
  • .. we were trained to meet any new situation by reorganising; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illuson of progress

    — Petronius (210 BC)
  • The time we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains

    — Proust
  • You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

    — William J. H. Boetcker
  • Only a genealogist thinks taking a step backwards is progress

    — Lorna 1992
  • No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

    — George Bernard Shaw
  • A TV remote is female: It easily gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know which buttons to push, he just keeps trying.

    — Anon
  • Hammers are male: Because in the last 5000 years they've hardly changed at all, and are occasionally handy to have around.

    — Anon
  • The right thing to do is to do nothing, the place to do it is in a place of concealment and the time to do it is as often as possible.

    — Tony Cook "The Biology of Terrestrial Molluscs"