LOUGHTY, MacMicking and Slora, go forth and multiply – your good name depends on it.

These are just some of the endangered ancient family names of Scotland. They are now on the verge of extinction due to heirless marriages and altered spellings, new research has shown.

According to genealogists, as few as 20 households in the UK now bear the surname MacQuoid, onc common in Britain and Ireland.

A search of the electoral register reveals just one Loughty family left, while Slora boasts only 41 known holders although there are other variations such as Slorah, with just five. Just a couple of hundred MacMickings exist, alongside variant spellings such as McMeekin, MacMichan and McMeikine. Many other names have disappeared from public record altogether.

While MacCaa has associations with several prominent clans, including MacFarlane, MacDonald and Galloway, the name is “presumed extinct” in the UK by ancestry website MyHeritage.com.

Alhough there are 900 holders of the name in the US, emigration and gradual decline have all but ended its homeland presence.

Genealogist Laurence Harris, who advises the family tree website, said the disappearance was likely due to natural decline combined with a dose of bad luck. He said: “I still think the biggest factor is one of chance. Because names are historically passed down from one generation to another via the male line, it is largely a matter of chance as to whether a couple has male children or not, and whether those children then grow up to marry and pass their names down.”

Surnames first caught on in the 13th century when people began registering births alongside a place or father’s occupation, but spellings were rarely standardised.

More recent events reduced the life of some names, thinning out a few that were specific to certain places. “The Napoleonic conflicts and the first world war saw entire generations of young men wiped out: boys who often bore distinctive surnames relating to the villages or hamlets from which they came,” Harris said. Others were lost through migration, though there is evidence of returning Australians, Canadians and Americans reintroducing names centuries later.

Fashion, too, has played a part, as changing use of slang renders some names improper for polite society. While Randy Bumgardner is well-known in the US as a senior State Department official, some family members might be tempted to change their name if ever they moved to the UK. At the less extreme end, the surnames Spinster, Puscat and Bytheseashore appear to have died out in the 20th century as they started to look ridiculous.

Amid the generally bleak outlook for niche Scottish surnames, however, there is some hope for the future. Younger women are far more likely than their predecessors to keep their own names after marriage, particularly if they have a brand built around one. A rare surname can help push the holder up the Google search rankings, and can be more memorable than Smith or Jones – an asset in any business involving personal connections.

The Herald’s fashion editor, Elizabeth McMeekin, kept her own name for professional use after marrying.

“It’s been a running joke between my sister and I that if we married and changed our names we’d be the last of the McMeekins,” she said.

But while she can joke about the outlook for her unusual monicker, she is more philosophical about the issue of what’s in a name.

“The question is what’s important: is it your history or your physical connection to the name?” she asked. “Genetically speaking, it doesn’t really matter whether your ancestors carry the same name. I’m my mother’s daughter as much as my father’s, but I don’t carry her maiden name.”