Carey-Stirling connection

[RectaPete]

As you may have gleaned from my signature, one of my Irish family names is Carey. For a start, I'm not entirely sure if it's a clan in its own right or a sept of something bigger.

On a whim, I decided to see if Scotclans listed it as a sept of a Scottish clan. Indeed it did, of Stirling. However, when I got to the Stirling page it said that there are no recognised septs of the clan. So what's the connection? As far as I know, Carey is almost exclusively an Irish name, so did an early descendent of the Stirlings move to Ireland? Any other explaination? Or is Scotclans just having me on?

[The Wizard of BC]

It is generally accepted that the Irish did not have the Clan system that the Highlanders of Scotland did. For that matter neither did the Scottish Lowlanders.

This idea that you will be part of a Highland Clan therefore makes no sense.

The Irish usually think of themselves as coming from one of the Irish Counties. This is why the Irish Tartans were designed by the County and not family names.

If you can trace your ancestry back to where or what county they come from you would be on the right track.

Carey is not a Highland Clan. Nor is Stirling. Neither have a chief on the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs. Then again neither does Douglas which many people would assume was a Highland Clan. The Douglas's are actually one of the prominent Lowland Scottish Families.

It is also assumed by many that if you carry a name that is a Highland Clan then you are part of that Clan. I'd like you to tell that to those Gordons from down around New Galloway or those Campbells who are not from the Highlands but from Ayrshire SW of Glasgow.

Personally, if I were of Irish descent, I doubt I would be searching for an affiliation with someone else in a totally different country.

The waters get really muddy when we throw this idea of Septs in. There is no one, authoritative, Sept list. Each Clan Chief may decide which names he accepts. That can and does change.
Back in the days of the Clan system it was still common to carry the last name of what one of your ancestors did for a living. Everyone needed the guy who put the feathers on the arrows so Fletchers were everywhere. Just as Smith, Mason, Fuller, and thousands of other occupational names.
What it came down to in the end (and in a very overly simplified way) was, - were you willing to swear fealty to this or that guy? Swearing fealty would perhaps mean - If the guys from over that mountain, come over here and try to steal our cattle, and I ring the bell, will you grab your pitchfork and help the rest of us to chase them off.
That's what Clan was in a nutshell. A willingness to help the group no matter who or what comes over that mountain.

The Clan system of the Highlands did not exist on most the Eastern coast or below the city of Stirling. The Lowlanders were the most literate people of their time. They invented the public library system for gosh sake. They reviled the Highlanders. As one Lowlander put it with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, "Stupid dumb hillbillies, don't have enough sense to learn how to read and write or wear pants".

[cessna152towser]

As a Scottish Armiger I can vouch for what Steve said above.
The Clan system and the Kilt were to be found historically only in the Scottish Highlands.
The Lowlands did have their families and often a Head of Family who would never have been referred to as Chief of the Clan.
In more recent times the lowland families have begun to market themselves as Clans, partly in consequence of the various lowland family tartans invented by Wilsons of Bannockburn during the early eighteen hundreds and partly due to the interest in Scottish heritage from the diaspora.
I have the surname Cunningham which is very common in the lowland area of Scotland where I was born but is rarely found where I now live. The original Norman knight, Warnebald, who adopted the name Cunningham was granted an area of land in what is now part of Ayrshire, Scotland, and the land was subsequently sub-divided among children, grand-children etc. with the result that there were many Cadet families with the name Cunningham who became farmers in Ayrshire and many peasants who adopted the name Cunningham when they settled on those farms as workers for the land owner.
Until fairly recent times, you could not be recognised as a Clan Armiger unless you could prove your ancestry back to the original Noble, however the rules are now relaxed and you only need to prove in your Petition to the Lord Lyon that you have a paternal line of four previous generations, all born in Scotland and all of the same family name, together with satisfying the Lord Lyon that you are of good character, and demonstrate some support from existing Armigers.
We do call ourselves "Clans" nowadays and host clan tents at a few events.
Traditionally the Head of the Family Cunningham was the Earl of Glencairn. The Earldom lapsed during the seventeen nineties and it is only within the past few years that the Lord Lyon has recognised a new Head of Family, who is now regarded as our Chief.
If you attend a clan gathering in the Scottish lowlands you will see the Chiefs wearing their trews in the tartans of their clans. Even today it is relatively unusual here to find a Chief of a lowland clan wearing a kilt.

[RectaPete]

Thank you for the information. I think Scotclans was having a laugh.

According to this http://www.libraryireland.com/names/d/de-carrun.php, Carey is derived from a Norman Welsh name, with bearers ultimately originating from Carew in Pembrokeshire. So while it doesn't have any known Scottish connections, it does have Welsh ones. Pretty distant, but still, a nice surprise to know I probably have some Welsh in me Unfortunately, Pembroke doesn't have a county tartan (yet ;)), nor does the Carey name.

I'm the human British Isles!

[ctbuchanan]

I usually go to the Surnames database for info on family name origins. Here is Carey
There are, unusually, four distinct origins for this name, found as "Cary", "Carey" and "Carye". The first of these is of Welsh and Cornish origin, as a variant of the locational name "Carew", from any of the minor places named from the Welsh "caer" fort, and "rhiw", hill. The Carey family who have held the estate of Antony in Cornwall throughout the Middle Ages derive their name from this source. The second possible origin is English and also locational, from any of the places in Devon and Somerset so called from being situated on the River Cary, thought to be so named from the Celtic root-word "Car", meaning "love", "liking" - so, perhaps, "pleasant stream". The third source is French, and another locational name, from the manor of "Carrey", near Lisieux, Normandy. The marriage of "Henry Crey" and "Ann Morgan" is recorded in London in 1545. Finally, Carey is an Anglicized form of the old Gaelic O' Ciardha, the Gaelic prefix "O" indicating "male descendant of", plus the personal byname Ciardha from "ciar" dark or black. The Careys were lords of Carbury (Co. Kildare), up to the mid 12th Century. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Hamo de Kan, which was dated 1205 "Pleas before the King or his Justices", Somerset, during the reign of King John, known as "Lackland", 1199 - 1216.

Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/carey#ixzz3r6ZISwXY

The other source I like is the distribution maps of the 1881 and 1998 census at the National Trust.

Here is the link to the National Trust distribution map of 1881 census.
http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Ma...y=GB&type=name

Interestingly if you look at the 1998 census the name is much more numerous in Scotland in more modern times.
http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Ma...y=GB&type=name