From what they said, he was in some kind of orphanage or childs' home or some kind
, if I heard right - so these were staff ?

it certainly seemed that way.

The Night Of The Doctor made the Big Finnish stories canon as the Eighth Doctor named his companions before regenerating. I am not too sure how that applies to the New Adventures series.

Lungbarrow was 7 and a different companion.

Kate Lethbridge Stewart was a character in the New Adventures, and "The Pandorica Opens" mentions the Chelonians, which is a race from those books.

And of course we can accept and disregard whatever we want. The programme has contradicted itself many times, from how Atlantis was destroyed, to who came up with the name TARDIS, to whether or not the Doctor is half-human. It all counts, and all of it can be retconned or quietly forgotten about.

Really?
How did he get a granddaughter?

It's complicated. Back before Time Lords were Time Lords the race was fertile. There were three founders of Time Lord society - Rassilon, Omega and The Other. The Other had a granddaughter. Once Gallifreyans became sterile, Rassilon created genetic looms, from which fully-grown (in body, not mind) Time Lords who call each other "cousins" would emerge. The Other killed himself by throwing himself into a loom, vowing one day to return.

Later, the Doctor was loomed, with the nickname "Snail", because he's the only Gallifreyan loomed with a belly-button. He goes back in time and meets Susan, who recognises something in him and decides to call him "Grandfather".

The couple in the barn said he could join the other boys in the house, what if time Lords are created via looms and galifrean couples adopt a child from their genetic/family/chapter loom house? The 10th doctor said he was a kid at 30 so in time Lord term the young doctor in listen was a toddler...

I'm a loomer, and I loomed someone who's near to me.
I'm a loomer, and I'm not what I appear to be.

It only made those particular companions canon as there no reason not to use them. It is fine to consider the stories canon too but the television series is not bound by them.

Don't think I trust you. All smiley and clownlike, but I can see the frown.

As I haven't read the book, shouldn't be exposing my ignorance here, but can't resist a Beatles reference. Does the book loom large in cannon? Sorry, canon.

Uh oh.

The series rewrites and bastardises canon

What about his being half-human?

At the time the New Adventures started to be published it was said they were the official continuation of Doctor Who.

I may be wrong, but I think it was also mentioned in the foreword of the first book Timewyrm : Genesis

With Clara being inserted in the Doctor's timestream, is ANYTHING really "canon" anymore?

Surely the Doctor's entire timestream was rewritten - even changing his date of death. It was done in a way that protected his personal "fixed points" and lead to him being at Trenzalore as he originally was - but it wasn't actually "restored" so much as "repaired".

And even after that "repair", the Doctor himself went back and did another "repair" when he his Gallifrey - and then the Timelords did yet another "repair" when they gave him more lives and prevented his death.

Not one adventure was mentioned, only the companions' names. So the best you can say is that 8's companions are definite canon.

You really can't claim that for adventures that haven't once been referenced in-show. So, no, the Big Finish adventures are not yet definite tv-canon. Merely personal-canon, if one would feel so inclined.

I took it that it was either a children's home or a school, a pre-academy prep school maybe? Though we don't know, of course.

I'm all for personal canon, but it seems like a stretch to say the names were the same but none of the stories happened. To me that would make the exclusion of the stories personal canon.

I don't understand what you mean by that. The stories might well be confirmed at some point, but they haven't been. None of them were mentioned with the names of the companions, and we haven't seen any of them. Until the stories are explicitly referenced, they aren't yet canon. The companions have been explicitly mentioned, so they are canon.

In the TV universe, it could be a multitude of different reasons that 8 got with those companions - it's very likely that if its ever explored in any great depth on the show then the origins will be the same as the Big Finish origins. But until that happens there exists no official canonicity on them.

This might be rude. It's not canon if it's not confirmed in the TV series. End of...

It occurs to me that this goes beyond Lungbarrow.

Each version of the Doctor's backstory in all formats has been erased one by one.

Coburn, Holmes, Platt, RTD.....

Not so sure anything actually changed once Clara was inserted into the Doctor's timeline. Although we never saw her in classic Who (for obvious real world reasons) it's more than likely (to me) that she simply made events turn out as they always had. In effect cancelling out any changes the GI would have made had she not gone into the Doctor's timeline as well.

Everything "returned" perfectly to normal once Clara entered the Doctor's timeline.

His companions were named in order or appearance, and the show-runner vouched for the series as the official life of the Eighth Doctor, therefore it takes more personal rationalization to discount them from the continuity than it does to include them.

So then NA etc is also canon as I said

That's the point though - the events were changed and in some cases - as we saw - she had to ADD new events to get same end result - her Doctor being alive up to the time of his trip to Trenzalore.

Prime example - for some reason and by some method we never saw, the GI managed to persuade the Doctor to take the wrong Tardis and Clara had intervene to get him to take the right one. Trouble is, "canon" says that the Tardis chose him as much as he chose her and "canon" now says that it was Clara's choice.

So which "canon" are we taking?

I'd say it must always be the most recently shown on TV - and that means that all previous "canon" was rendered obsolete by Clara's presence and actions. (Some will still be as previously stated but it will entirely up to the present and future writers to says what is what).