History of the Name

The erroneous notion that clans are Highland groups and families are Lowland units is very much a Victorian 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.

As a personal name, the Old English word Wudu, meaning wood, implied a dweller in or near a wood - though it is questionable why that should have been a distinction in an age when trees covered so much more of the land than now. The equally ancient name Wod (which was how the chiefly family, the Woods of Largo, were still spelling their name well into the 17th. century) described one who was wild, crazy. By that would have been meant a warrior who became frenzied or savage in battle; a compliment in an unstable, warlike society, and one to prize as a patronymic. No wonder it took on! (A number of variations developed, such as Vod, Yod, Wode, Wood, Woode and Voud.) In the year 2000, Wood was the 61st. of Scotland's top surnames. This also explains why the Arms escutcheons of several prominent Wood families throughout the UK (including the Woods of Bonnytoun) are surmounted by a crest that proudly depicts a naked Savage bearing a club, and the motto, Defend.

It is generally thought that names like Wood, Stone, Clay and so on could well have been among the many used figuratively to describe a man’s character or physical qualities. After all, occupational names associated with wood, for example, are typically Wright, Wheelwright etc., Carpenter, Forester, Joiner, Carver, Cooper, Turner, Sawyer and very many others.

What we now think of as first names mostly had 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.
Peter, Peters, Peterson; John, Johns, Johnson; William, Williams, Williamson; Will, Wills, Wilson; Robert, Roberts, Robertson; Wood, Woods, Woodson, etc., etc.

Then there is the Norman French derivation, de Vosco (modern French Dubois or just Bois), meaning ‘of wood’. Williemus de Bosco was 12th century Chancellor of Scotland to King William the Lion. A baron de Bosco was at Runnymede in 1215 supporting the Magna Charta, and circa 1300 there are records of a Sir Robert (Boys) de Bosco and his daughter Alice de (Boys) Bosco.

Similarly, Gaelic forms incorporating ‘Coill’ took the English translation over time. So, like many other families with Angle (Engle-ish) names, there were probably Woods settled in the south-east long before Scotland existed as a country. Among the favoured Norman families that subsequently moved into southern Scotland – some say with King David I – may have been the Woods who acquired Bonnington in Angus. They held extensive lands in that district as well as Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire, Perthshire and elsewhere.

Admiral Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, Fife, (circa 1455 – 1515) was almost 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 prominent 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 who later married and had children of their own. The Wood clan may soon have a Chief once again.