our heroes were named Linville (sounds like their ancestors were upperclass French, Le Sieur de Linville or somebody)

"Linville" evokes Scottish-Canadian to me, but that's because I live close enough to the former linseed capital of Canada to have been there multiple times on field trips.

clocketpatch has described the feeling best

I'm not sure how much use it is to link a friends-locked post as citation, but okay.