How many tartans are there?

[HixwithanX]

Seems like a simple enough question but answers vary from between 3,500 and "over twenty thousand."

So, how many tartans are there and how many registries?

Thanks in advance.

[Mikilt]

Seems like a simple enough question but answers vary from between 3,500 and "over twenty thousand."

So, how many tartans are there and how many registries?



Thanks in advance.

How many tartans there are and how many registries may be two very different questions. As I get emails from the Scottish Register of Tartans when a new tartan is registered, I can tell you that they number of registered tartans grows at least monthly. There must be a running tally somewhere.

Then there are unregistered tartans. I don't think there is any way to count these.

[figheadair]

The number of tartans and the number of registers is indeed two entirely different questions. And then there's the question of what is a tartan, as opposed to a check, trade fancy, or all those horrid things one sees on a golf course .

There is the official Scottish Register of Tartans which certainly doesn't have all the known tartans (known by whom you may well ask). The Scottish Tartans Authority's database is probably the largest and is rapidly approaching 10,000 but certainly doesn't contain every tartan, even those which one might think of a true tartans (whatever that means).

As a tartan historian I have records of tartans from my research that no-one else has.

No Register can or will ever have everything. There are just too many new ones being designed, often for little more than personal vanity in many cases, previous records being corrected and yes, even old ones being rediscovered. To highlight the point/difficulty, In just the past two weeks I've found 2 18th century plaids c1740-60, send leads to 2 early Wilsons' plaids one of which is in a previously unknown sett and discovered a lovely mid-Victorian shawl in yet another Royal Stewart variant. None of these are in any other database/register.

So, not so simple as one might at first think.

[Steve Ashton]

Peter, can you tell us how many are registered with the STA today?

My Dress Blue design which was registered on 09/06/12 is ITI #10,689. So I assumed that there were at least that many in the STA database two years ago.

[figheadair]

Peter, can you tell us how many are registered with the STA today?

My Dress Blue design which was registered on 09/06/12 is ITI #10,689. So I assumed that there were at least that many in the STA database two years ago.

I'll need to check tomorrow but it's not quite that straight forward as blocks of numbers have been forward allocated. I think the STR were given 10,000 onwards to give clear blue water so to speak whereas I have 100 numbers in the upper 8000s allocated for my research. Add to that the fact that some of the records are duplicates and we're slowing going through cleansing data and you'll see that the answer is a little more compleicated. More anon.

[figheadair]

I'll need to check tomorrow but it's not quite that straight forward as blocks of numbers have been forward allocated. I think the STR were given 10,000 onwards to give clear blue water so to speak whereas I have 100 numbers in the upper 8000s allocated for my research. Add to that the fact that some of the records are duplicates and we're slowing going through cleansing data and you'll see that the answer is a little more compleicated. More anon.

Give or take the odd 100, and allowing for errors and duplications, the STA Db has about 7,800 tartans on record.