The Testaments of the different islands are recorded in groups, according as the Commissary perambulated the same, holding his courts throughout the different parishes. For the sake of convenience, those of Shetland have been arranged in a separate Index from Orkney. The lists show in a marked manner how, by the seventeenth century, names in Orkney had departed from the Norwegian system of patronymics in favour of those of places, while in Shetland the practice, which can hardly even yet be said to be extinct, of calling the son from his father's Christian name, was in full force, thus the son of William Magnusson of Buness becomes Henry Williamson of Buness, and in his turn his son is Magnus Henryson or Henderson.
