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Clan Lands
Largo in Fife; Grange, Orky and Lambieletham in Fife; Bonnytoun (Bonnington) in Angus; Craig in Angus by Montrose; Balbegno on the River North Esk in Kincardineshire; land holdings in Lothian, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire and Banffshire
(The fortunes of every clan's territories waxed and waned over time; their extent and influence fluctuated enormously and continually)
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The erroneous notion that clans are Highland groups and families are Lowland units is very much a Victorian (19th century) one. In fact, the terms are interchangeable, and many a Lowland laird has held from the Lyon Court the title ‘Chief of the Name and Arms’. This is true of the Woods. (Vide the authoritative treatise written by Sir Crispin Agnew QC, Rothesay Herald of Arms in Ordinary at the Court of the Lord Lyon, reproduced at - http://www.scotarmigers.net/pdfs/info-leaflet-11.pdf .) Another myth - that only Highlanders wore tartan - was propagated by those Lowlanders wishing to distance themselves from the defeated Jacobite clans, during the dangerous years of retribution following the1746 Battle of Culloden. However, the Scottish Tartans Authority has plenty of evidence to show that it was quite usual for Lowlanders, too, to wear district/family-associated tartans, and indeed that the border counties of the south had always been a major centre for weaving tweed and tartan cloth of the finest quality.
It is often said that the surname Wood derives from Anglo-Saxon 'wudu' meaning a wood or forest. No doubt that is true of the word, but not necessarily of the surname. It seems there are too many of us for that to have been the sole or even primary origin.
People were commonly named after features that described where they lived (ford, hill, brook, heath and so on) or their occupation (miller, archer, mason, carpenter, cook, potter etc.), but people so named are today nowhere near as numerous as the Woods. In fact, during the early Middle Ages much of the population lived either in or near woodland, so there was nothing especially distinctive or 'nameworthy' about it; moreover, using their own woodcraft skills was essential to the workaday life of all peasants and farmers.
Many individuals were known for their physical or behavioural characteristics. The most frequent surname throughout the United Kindgom is Smith. That derives from 'smitan' the ancient word for 'to smite' (a blacksmith is an iron beater). It is understandable that members of the fierce warrior tribes of those centuries would want to be famous for being smiters, hence the popularity today of the name Smith. Similarly then, Wood as a personal name probably came from the Anglo-Saxon Wode or Wod, the Germanic storm god of great antiquity known for his wildness (links with Woden, from whom we get Wednesday). Wod, therefore, generally came to mean 'wild' or 'crazy', signifying one who becomes frenzied or savage in the midst of battle - surely a compliment in an unstable, warlike society, and one to prize as a patronymic. It was how our chiefly family, the Woods of Largo, were still spelling their name well into the 17th. century. Writers as late as Shakespeare used 'wod' in the sense of being wild. By the 14th century, there were families surnamed both Wod and Wood resident in the main towns, and it was when the former had finally become 'modernised' to Wood by the late 17th century that the large numbers of us became apparent.
It is believed that most Scottish Woods, including those who had Anglicised their Gaelic name Coil, were once called Wod. In the year 2000, Wood was the 61st. of Scotland's top 100 surnames.
Personal names that became surnames.
What we now think of as first names mostly had descriptive meanings of their own (e.g., Peter = Rock), to which "son of" was often added when surnames became necessary in the Middle Ages. So, compare the following few examples: Peter, Peters, Peterson; Adam, Adams, Adamson; John, Johns, Johnson; William, Williams, Williamson; Will, Wills, Wilson; Robert, Roberts, Robertson; Wood, Woods, Woodson, and scores of others that readily come to mind.
Before Scotland became the nation we know today, all of the south-eastern region was part of the mighty Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, which stretched from the River Humber (where the port of Hull is located) to the River Forth (where Edinburgh - a Brythonic and English name - stands) and sometimes beyond that. The principal language here has been English ever since. By the late 10th century, Northumbria was so weakened and divided by incessant Viking incursions along its extensive coastline that it began losing territory north of the River Tweed to what would later become Scotland. Among the long-settled families left behind were the Wods who would acquire lands in Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire, Kincardineshire, Banffshire and Fife, and form confederacies to extend and defend their interests.
This story is typical of how a number of Scottish clans came into being. Some clan families were founded much later by well-born Norman and Flemish mercenaries in the pay of warlords or the likes of King David I.
It is apt that the Arms escutcheons of the heads of several prominent Wood families in the UK (including the Woods of Bonnytoun) are surmounted by a crest that proudly depicts a naked Savage - the storm god himself? - bearing a club, and the motto, Defend.
Admiral Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, Fife, (circa 1455 – 1515) was certainly a scion of that ancient clan. He was famous for inflicting many defeats on foreign pirates and privateers as well as squadrons of ships sent by the English government to harass the Scots. In the true patriarchal tradition, his successors built a hospital and school in Fife for their kinsmen named Wood, and were conspicuous in Scottish history both politically and militarily: they continued to be a significant influence in British politics and were foremost among the thousands of Scots who contributed enormously to the economic and armed expansion of the British Empire well into the 19th century. The main line of Sir Andrew’s descendants is considered by the Court of the Lord Lyon King of Arms to be the chiefly one. The record of succession is complete right down to 1916, when Andrew George Wood died in Mayfair, London, leaving his estate on the border of Wales and Shropshire to his second wife, with whom he had two daughters. A grandson of the elder daughter is today the representer of that distinguished family. The Wood clan may soon have a Chief once again.
 Lower Largo, on the north bank of the Firth of Forth
Footnote. This ancient fishing village is also where Alexander Selkirk (properly Selcraig) 1676-1721, son of a local shoemaker and tanner, was born. His adventures as a castaway on a Pacific island prompted Daniel Defoe's tale of Robinson Crusoe, and were the inspiration for William Cowper's eloquent lines: I am monarch of all I survey, / My right there is none to dispute: / From the centre all round to the sea, / I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
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