Risk

The Risk Sept of the Clan Buchanan

The sept Risk does not seem to generate variations.  Buchanan of Auchmar indicates that a son of the Buchanan of Drumikill was born upon the “Risks of Drymen” and received the surname Risk from the place of his birth.  The name is quite common in Fintry and Stirlingshire to this day.

The Gaelic word riasg, according to George Black, Ph.D, means a “morass with sedge”.  Alan W. Risk, LL.B., former secretary of the Buchanan Society in Scotland, translates riesghs, in a private letter as “something like an area of wet boggy ground where coarse grass grows and where peats may be dug.” 

In any case, it is reasonably certain that the surname Risk literally refers to the swamps near Loch Lomond.

(Some contend that Rusk and its derivations are variations of Risk.  However, Rusk is the reference to tannists stripping bark from oak trees for tannic acid.)