New here - need help with understanding Clans

[davidlpope]

Today the clans still exist in Scotland, but in a quite different form than when they came to an inevitably and recognisable end in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In Scotland, and elsewhere in the world, they have become 'societies', groups of folk perhaps of a common ancestry but more likely based on their common and wide-spread surname alone, or of their home-land locale in Scotland . They may or may not be blood related, but they feel a common bond and a common purpose to preserve and enhance Highland heritage as they see it. Often it's 'as they see it' that is the case in America; caution is offered that what you most often see is not the culture of Scotland now or in times past but a hybrid formed from myth and misunderstanding.

Nailed it.