Chapter:

Dr. James Murdoch M.D. of Craigow 1785-1848
Early Pioneer of Medicine in Van Diemens Land

APPENDIX 3. The Murdoch Name

Murdoch seems a name of Gaelic origin, but is found in England as far back as William the Conqueror's day. The Doomsday Book, dating from 1085 to 1086, records Murdocs and Murdacs in Yorkshire, Oxfordshire and Sussex. Later a Murdoc was Dean of Appleby (Westmoreland) in 1176.

Scotland was the home of most of the later Murdochs. Walter Murdoch was a man of some note there in the reign of William the Lion (1165 to 1214). Murdoch, Duke of Albany, a Kinsman of the Royal Stuart House, was executed in 1425. Here Murdoch was a Christian name, a not uncommon use of it later.

Murdoch, like the Irish Murtagh, seems to mean man of the sea. It may be a confusion, or a coalescence, of two gaelic names: Muirteach, a mariner, related to the name MacVurich; (2) Muriehadh, a sea warrior, from which came McMurchie and Murchison. The name Murdoch was common on the Isle of Arran at an early date. Some of the early Murdochs seem to have been Norsemen. These Norsemen of Ireland and of the Western Isles settled in Cumberland, Westmoreland and North Lancashire at an early period and penetrated across the Pennines into Yorkshire.

Nasr-ed-din, Shah of Persia, greatly revered William Murdock, the inventor of gas lighting, and linked his name to that of Merodach or Marduk, the Babylonian God of Light. Murdock was born in Ayrshire and his father John Murdoch, always spelt his name Murdoch. The son changed the spelling to Murdock when he went to England because the English could not give the proper sound to the guttural 'ch'.