Tartan Questions

[Offline]

Hello again!

I was trying to do more research into my family and came across a tartan that I believe is my families. As I started doing research into the tartan, I read on here that many tartans were not registered until the 1900s.

I am trying to go as authentic as I can for my family name and was wondering if anyone could verify if the tartan I found is for my family or not. The more research I did the more it pointed me to an alternate spelling of my name

The family name is Downey and the tartan (Downie) is below:



Thank you all for your help!

Kraig

[Grizzly]

Hi and firstly welcome to xmarks from Southampton UK.

I checked on the Scottish Tartans Authority website and it would seem that Downey/Downie is a sept of the Lindsay Clan. The Downie tartan that you found was only designed in 1982 so is a modern concept. The STA shows 2 registered Lindsay tartans standard and hunting. Nice tartans.

[Offline]

Thank you so much. I will look into those tartans as well.

Kraig

[Grizzly]

http://www.downiesurname.org/clans-a...ie-surname.php

Check out the above link. It has some interesting and useful information that may assist in your search.

[Offline]

That was an excellent read. Thank you much for pointing me there.

[gilmore]

A note of reality: almost all tartan designs were created long---centuries--- after the hey days of the clans, by tartan merchants beginning in the 19th century, who gave them names in order to sell them to the newly emerging, post-Industrial Revolution, urban middle class in search of rural and Highland fantasies, and with the money to pay for it. There are only two ways to know which---if any---clan your ancestors were associated with. One is time-consuming genealogical research in which one goes backward in time, carefully documenting each generation before preceding to the previous one. The other is Y-DNA testing which might---and only might---be helpful in determining one's patrilineal ancestry. For info on this, see the FAQ at www.familytreedna.com

You should also be aware that septs were historically not a Scots institution, but were an Irish idea, which the tartan merchants have promoted as a way to sell more tartan. Many of them are totally bogus, others merely questionable.

What made a person a member of a clan---if we can use that terms---was not birth and surname, but allegiance to a clan chief. These days some say that it is right and proper to write a clan chief and ask for permission to be associated with his clan.

One must remember that clans and clan associations are two different things.

[Pleater]

If you have a direct paternal line to a surname or region time doesn't matter, it cannot erase the connection.

Personally I wear an Armstrong tartan because my father was besotted with the Armstrong Sidderley Sapphire motor car,- I believe his granddad Wilson's family were connected with engineers working at Armstrongs. I remember him waiting for hours for the owner of a Sidderley Sapphire to come back to the car just to be able to speak to him and hear the engine as he drove away.

As long as you feel a connection and can maintain the right to it with conviction should the kilt police chose to interrogate you there is no reason to decide against a wearing a tartan. Conversely there is no reason to wear a tartan which shares your surname or a close spelling of it if it originated in an area to which you can find no ancestral connection.

Anne the Pleater :ootd: