Most of us have become used to the fact that we are all probably closely related. When we traveled and saw a Ridpath or Redpath in the phone book in a strange city, we've thought "They must be related, because it is such an uncommon family name." That has lead many of us to wonder where the name came from and how or why there are such variations.

Conventional wisdom has it that the name and family came from an area in Berwickshire, Scotland where the small village of Redpath is located today. The earliest known spellings, starting around 1200 were some form of Redpath (de Redpath, de Redepath, etc). The local pronunciation however is a rather slurred together "rippith". This may explain it's changing form into Ridpath, Reidpath, and even rarer forms such as Redpith, Ridpeth, etc. This theory goes on to explain that as literacy, care in spelling, and the importance of family/last names increased, at some point the scattered groups of family members settled on a common spelling, with Redpath, Ridpath and Reidpath being the most common spellings in use today.

Another explanation has completely separate origins for the two most common variations. The Redpath name follows the conventional wisdom just discussed, but the Ridpath variation came about entirely differently. There was an occupation where people cleared the road or "pike" between "turnpikes", which were tollbooths at each end of those community roads. The folks were "Rid-path"s because they rid the path of debris and vegetation. Part of this theory also explains that there were less Ridpath's so the name is less common than all the family that grew around the village of Redpath over the course of hundreds of years.

There also is a single record of a Nancy Redpath in 1798 that has her as a Native American in the Cherokee tribe in Virginia. Could there actually have been some Native American Indians who used the name Red Path?

Now, how did that village in Scotland get the name Redpath? There are a few theories there as well. The most repeated one is that there was indeed a path that was the color red due to the presence of red clay in the local soil, and the village and peoples were "of the Red Path" (de Redpath). Another explanation substitutes reeds or a brushy swamp, therefore a "Reedy Path". And of course, the village may have had a number of the people with the occupation of "Rid-Paths", just to combine a few theories.

This is a good example of how interesting our family history can be and why there often is no single, clear answer to even our simplest questions about our family's past.