"A great difficulty with the Black-names," says Harrison, "is the impossibility in many cases of deciding whether the etymon is the Old English blaec, blac, 'black,' or the OE, blac, 'bright,' 'white,' 'pale.' Normally blaec, blac, yields 'black,' and blac should give 'blake' (or 'bloke'); but the forms are inextricably confused, and the present spelling is often no guide to the pronunciation past or present." Blaecca is a well-known Old English personal name, and Beda says (H. E., II, 16) that the baptism of Blaecca, prefect of the city of Lincoln, and his whole household was the first fruits of the preaching of Paulinus, A.D. 628. In early Scots Latin charters the name is rendered Niger. Hugh Niger appears as a charter witness in Angus in 1178 (RAA., I, p. 9), and Radulfus niger, deacon of Lothian, was a charter witness in Fife between 1200—1210 (LAC., p. 131; LSC., p. 38). Robertus Niger, burgess of Elgin, witnessed a composition between Simon, bishop of Moray and Freskyn de Moravia, lord of Duffus, in 1248 (REM., p. 114), Adam the Black was one of the jurors on an inquisition held at Lanark in 1303 (Bain, II, 1420), Thomas Blak, a Scots prisoner of war in the Tower of London, was released in 1353 (Bain, III, 1568), another Thomas Blak was tenant of Rahill in 1376 (RHM., I, p. lviii), and Laurencius Blac was juror at a court held at "Le Ballocis Hill" near Inverness in 1376—7 (Innes Familie, p. 63). Thomas Blac was a witness in 1463 (Lennox, II, p. 78), and James Blak and William Blake appear as jurors on an inquest in Lanark in 1498 (Lanark, p. 9). The surname was common in St. Andrews and in Prestwick in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and very common in Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. The Clan Lamont Society claims that Blacks were originally Lamonts who changed their name. William Black the novelist, traced his pedigree to a branch of Clan Lamont who were driven from Lamont territory under a leader called the Black Priest. The surname is also used as an Englishing of Macilduy and Macildowie (G M'llle dhuibh or Mac Gille dhuibh, 'son of the black lad'). In Arngyllshire it is a translation of Huie, which itself is a much curtailed form of Mac Gille dhuibh. Members of the old family of Black of Wateridgemuir, Logie-Buchan, have been burgesses of Aberdeen for at least four hundred and fifty years. Blacke 1682, Blaick 1647, Blayk 1363. See also Blake.

Blac and Blache are prae-Domesday names, and doubtless refer in general to the dark complexion and black hair of the original owners. Mr. Wright tells us that Wulric the Black, the ally of the famous Hereward the Saxon, was "so named because on one occasion he had blackened his face with charcoal, and thus disguised, had penetrated unobserved among his enemies, and killed ten of them with his spear before he made his retreat. Essays, ii., 102.