'Who Do You Think You Are?' Premiers On NBC: Ancestry Search

David was born in 1971 in Bathgate, a post-industrial town in West Lothian between Glasgow and Edinburgh. His father Sandy MacDonald is a Minister in the Church of Scotland. David’s real surname is MacDonald, but when he was starting out as an actor another performer was already known by that name. He chose instead the stage name Tennant because he saw Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant’s name in an article in Smash Hits and thought it sounded good!.

David begins his historical investigations at his parent's home in Paisley by focusing on his father’s side of the family, but  learns that the paper trail on the MacDonald family appears to run dry in Callendar, Perthshire. It cannot be so readily traced to the MacDonald clan from the outer Hebrides, as David and his father had hoped. So he turns his attention to the lineage of his mother Helen  McLeod, and  finds that these forebears hailed from the Isle of Mull.