Cardno Genealogies
Origin of the name
The family name CARDNO derives from a placename. The lands of Cardno, including Wester Cardno, Mains of Cardno, Ord of Cardno and Easter Cardno, lie to the south-west of the town of Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. However, there is no record of the lands being owned or occupied by anyone named CARDNO.
The placename comes from the Gaelic carden, a thicket, with the suffix -ach, meaning copse place.1,2 The 'Forest of Cardenauche' was granted to Edward Keith by King David II (1329-1371).3
J.M.A. Wood, author of The Andersons in Phingask and their Descendants (1910), researching the CARDNO family in the 1920s, found many members of the family believed their ancestors were of foreign extraction. He noted, “So strong is this tradition in the family today that to suggest any other origin is at once tabooed.” But he also noted there were several different origin stories.
In one version, the family are “of French extraction having accompanied the Fraser family from France at the time of the Norman conquest, and that when the Frasers settled in Philorth they too settled in the district and gave their name to the lands of Cardno.”
Alternatively, when Lord Saltoun fighting the Royalist cause at the battle of Worcester fell wounded in 1651, he was dragged from the battlefield by a French mercenary, named CARDNO. In gratitude for saving him, Lord Saltoun brought the mercenary back with him to Fraserburgh.
Some said the family has a Spanish origin and arrived in Aberdeenshire at the time of the Spanish Armada (1588) when a seaman, probably named CARDINO, was shipwrecked near Cairnbulg and then settled in the district.
Other stories give the name an Italian origin. In one, “three brothers of the name during a religious persecution in Italy had to fly their fatherland and sought refuge in Scotland and having found favour with the then Lord Saltoun were settled on farms on his lordship's lands.” Or an Italian marble merchant trading with the Fraserburgh area liked the surrounding countryside and decided to stay.
A century after Wood was researching the CARDNO family, family lore about an origin outside Scotland continues. What these stories have in common is the notion that the family name was given to the place called Cardno, when the opposite is true.