"Stewart Hunting Ancient" or "Ancient Hunting Stewart"? The grammar Nazi weighs in...

[WillowEstate]

But if my surname were "Ancient", I'd have one heck of a large selection of tartans to pick from. ;)

You would, indeed, sir! Nice one!

[unixken]

Sometimes the variant is quite necessary as an identifier. In a few cases it refers to an entirely different sett.

People will get sick of me continually using Buchanan as an example, but it supports this statement perfectly. The normal clan tartan, and the hunting variant for example, are entirely different setts, with different thread counts and different colors. They aren't simply different shades of the same colors. Buchanan and Buchanan Hunting (or was that Hunting Buchanan?) are quite different. Not simply "red becomes brown", etc.

[HarveyH]

People will get sick of me continually using Buchanan as an example, but it supports this statement perfectly.

This started as a thread essentially about grammar.

The point I will repeat is the there are tartan names which refer to particular tartan thread counts. The tartan names sometimes include a word which people think of as a variant - but in fact the tartan simply has a group of words as its name which together act as a proper noun.

So yes, as UnixKen has made clear there is a tartan called "Buchanan" it has thread count: B18G46K6B18K6Y40K6Y40K6B18K6R40W6R40K6B18K6G46

There is a completely separate tartan called "Buchanan Hunting" it has thread count:
B6T28G28T4B28T4B28T4G28T28R6

"Buchanan" and "Buchanan Hunting" are not variants but two different tartans.

Both of these tartans share a a clan connection but so do about 20 other different tartans with different setts.

So the whole of the "tartan name" is and should be treated as a proper noun.

As we all know each of these tartans could be woven in different colourways. This is where the adjective comes in: Ancient or Weathered or Muted etc. Barb is partially correct that, normally, adjectives attach in front of the nouns to which they refer. The problem is that Tartan Names are proper nouns and it is actually very unusual to attach an adjective to a proper noun in this way. It is not wrong, just unusual.

So ancient Buchanan Hunting works but causes confusion to the general hearer because the addition of the adjective gets understood not adjectivally, but as a further part of the proper noun i.e. Ancient not ancient.

The realty is that there is no true "rule" and the attempt to apply 18th century grammatical formations probably does not help understanding. Hence my own use of the tartan name and then a separate clause to describe the weaver's colour choice. It seems to me that any attempt to conflate these has the potential to lead to some confusion.

That said it would probably be a kinder place if there were no "Grammar Nazi" approaches and we simply used care to make clear what we are trying to say. So it does not really matter what the "correct" name of the tartan is, so long as we can all know that we are referring to the same thing.

[OC Richard]

Tartan Names are proper nouns and it is actually very unusual to attach an adjective to a proper noun in this way.

To me "Buchanan Hunting Ancient" is a title. It strikes me as an artifice to separate them and decide what their proper sequence should be if they were individual words.

For example 'Donald MacLeod MBE' functions as an entity, as a title, and I've not heard anyone object to the MBE not preceding the name.

[Liam]

Barb.... while I have forgotten most of my grade school grammer, I agree with you. It would be like saying that I wore my shoes brown today. The adjective generally preceeds the noun if my recollection is correct.

Slainte...Bill

[HarveyH]

To me "Buchanan Hunting Ancient" is a title. It strikes me as an artifice to separate them and decide what their proper sequence should be if they were individual words.

The difficulty is how the attributes are added - which is exactly Barb's question.

"Buchanan Hunting" is the actual name of a particular sett (as registered in the Scottish Register). Ancient is an attribute that describes the colours which have been used to weave the particular sett and not part of the name.

It is similar to your example as "Donald Macleod" is the proper noun to describe an individual and the MBE is an attribute marking the gift of a particular honour. Donald Macleod is still Donald Macleod whether or not the attribute of the honour is stated. Likewise "Buchanan Hunting" is still the name of a sett whether it is Ancient or Weathered or no attribute at all is stated.

[Barb T]

And, interestingly enough, I'm at the New Hampshire Highland Games, and I stopped by one of the vendors to see how the tartans were actually named in swatch books from the tartan mills. Lochcarron's swatch books have the tartans labeled Ancient Davidson, Weathered MacKenzie, etc., not Davison Ancient, MacKenzie Weathered. So, in their minds, the name of the tartan is Ancient so-and-so, Weathered so-and-so. The only exception was for the Old Setts, and they were, completely grammatically called, for example, Ancient Buchanan, Old Sett (note the comma!!!).

And, of course, the swatches were actually in order based on the main tartan name, so all the Davidsons were together so that you could find them (wouldn't make any sense to have all the Ancient tartans together alphabetically), but each swatch page was named with the adjective first and the tartan name second.

[unixken]

So describing a kilt as "Buchanan Old-Sett Modern" suffers grammatical problems in English.
(I wont complicate things with the España Spanish Tartan... "España Moderno")

But "Modern Buchanan Old-Sett" or "Buchanan Old-Sett ..comma... Modern" sound like they'd work.
I can live with the comma. I just need to discipline myself to add it.

[Barb T]

Buchanan and Buchanan Hunting (or was that Hunting Buchanan?) are quite different.

To my mind, it should be the Buchanan and the Hunting Buchanan.

[Carlo]

English is not my mothertongue so my opinion will only be 1 pence.

I'm the total opposite of Barb T. To me it should be Stewart Hunting Modern.
If we look at names in history we see Harald Bluetooth, Harald Fairhair, Harald Hardrada... People had names and nicknames.

To me Stewart is the name of the tartan. Since there is more than one Stewart tartan we need to give nicknames such as Hunting, Dress, Old-Sett...
That way we have defined a specific tartan ergo the tartan is Stewart Hunting.

Then weavers started to make different colourschemes so now we use Stewart Hunting as the name and Modern... as the nickname. That way we should have a logical, grammaticaly correct way to call the tartan Stewart Hunting Modern.

I hope my rambling is understandable.