My name is Brian Gaybba and I was born and still live in South Africa, from where, I believe, almost all the Gaybbas originate as descendents of James Gaybba who was born in Scotland in 1830 and settled in the western Cape South Africa after emigrating there.

I have collected information from various people about our family but until recently I had never put the little I had together. The story I grew up with was that three brothers came out from Scotland, fugitives from justice! They were James, William and John. It is interesting that these three names keep cropping up in Gaybba names. Just as the name Helen does. Helen ? or Helena Lerm, to give her her proper name ? was obviously an important early figure in the Gaybba family ? she is listed as the wife of the James Gaybba who emigrated to South Africa in the 19th century. However, a great-uncle of mine said he knew nothing of the story of the three brothers.

There are additional bits of oral tradition about the three brothers story. Several say that they jumped ship at Saldanha Bay on the West Coast of the Cape Province. One of them adds that one of the brothers left SA and returned to Scotland while another one says that one of the brothers went to Canada. We lack confirmation of these stories and it would be nice to receive such confirmation if anyone out there can provide it.

I also had a letter many years ago from someone in Bloemfontein asking about the Gaybba family. She told me that her side of the family believed our name was originally McGaybba and that we came from Scotland. So the Scotland idea seemed sound. But there was no such name I could find in Scottish genealogy called ?Mc?Gaybba. I then wondered if the name was originally McCabe but was spelt wrongly when our forefather(s?) arrived in SA from Scotland, since it would have been pronounced with a Scottish brogue, which could have sounded very much like McGaybba and may have been written down as such by immigration officials. I subsequently discovered that there is a whole society devoted to the McCabe name and one of the members of that society said that he actually came across a variant reading of it ? M'Caybba or McCaybba! I therefore incline to the view that we were originally McCabe and our forefather/s used the variant spelling, dropping the Mc and hardening the C of the surname to a ?G?. But others would not feel as inclined to that as I am.

Since then I have become part of small group of Gaybba descendents who are attempting to research as much of the Gaybba genealogy as we can. As regards the name, we have searched throughout a multitude of variants ? Gibb, Gebby, Gabby, Gabe, Gayebbur, McCaybba, etc., but so far we have been unable to connect any of them with a James who was born in 1830 and who ended up as James Gaybba in South Africa. Peter Jenner, who has joined our group (20th Feb 11)and who is a descendent of James Gaybba?s third son, James Andrew, has given us yet another tradition, within his family, of the Gaybba name. He writes: ?Just spoke to my mother, and the oral tradition that passed down on her side of the family, was that James was one of three brothers (perhaps a generation earlier) that originally came from Norway/Scandanavia via Scotland. The name would be similar to Gajba (j pronounced y) in that case?. Henrietta, another member of our research group, wonders whether Gajba was spelt Gibb in UK records because of the way in which Gibb was pronounced in Scotland ? Mitzi yet another member of our group, has established that Gibb was pronounced in Scotland in a way that sounds like ?Gaybba?. This may however be another red herring. Googling ?Gajba? brings up a lot of material that seems to be Slovenian rather than Scandanavian. I phoned my Slovenian mother-in-law and she had no idea of how to pronounce it and had never come across the word ?Gajba? before.

We have spread out over six or seven generations now and the present day old people of the clan (I am 70) are beginning to die out together with their memories. I therefore appeal to Gaybbas all over the world (I can see from the internet that they are quite well represented in the USA and I think Canada too) to send me any information they may have about the history of their family. For I am sure of one thing - we are all family!

Our work has produced remarkable results over the past few months: we can put together most of the pieces of the descendents of James Gaybba up to the third generation and have bits of information about the fourth generation. Elsewhere I will attempt to put down the bones of the information I have. If anyone recognises in the names a great or especially a great great grandparent (the further back the better), please contact me at b.gaybba@ru.ac.za and pass the information on to me. In return I will try and work out where you slot into the broader Gaybba family tree.