Doing The Research

[WolfPiper]

I've been doing soem research into tartans and I have a question:

Is there a book or website that will show the tartans associated with a surname if the surname is not the name of the tartan? For example, my family does not have a tartan that shares the name, how would I find if my surname was associated as a sept?

While I realise that I can probably wear almost any tartan, and my band uses a particular tartan, I want to find one that is meaningful to me individually.

[macwilkin]

Wolfpiper:

Your best bet would be to contact our own Matt Newsome, who is the curator of the Scottish Tartans Museum in Franklin, North Carolina. His user ID here is "M.A.C. Newsome". Looking up tartans associated with a particular surname is what he does for a living! :mrgreen:

Matt's web sites are:

www.scottishtartans.org
www.albanach.org

You might also try:

www.tartansauthority.com

and the tartan finder on the Standing Council of Scottish Chief's web site:

http://www.clanchiefs.org/tartanfinder.html

Yours aye,

Todd

I've been doing soem research into tartans and I have a question:

Is there a book or website that will show the tartans associated with a surname if the surname is not the name of the tartan? For example, my family does not have a tartan that shares the name, how would I find if my surname was associated as a sept?

While I realise that I can probably wear almost any tartan, and my band uses a particular tartan, I want to find one that is meaningful to me individually.

[Colin]

Todd has some great advise. You may also want to check here for some info http://www.tartanweb.org
www.electricscotland.com

[WolfPiper]

Thanks for the tips!

I forgot to mention that I'm Irish. That makes things harder as Irish clan tartans are (I am learning) harder to trace.

Whay I've found so far:

My mother's name "Lally" (possibly a derivitive of "Mulally") is somehow associated with the tartan "Tara/Murphy." I am trying to confirm if this is accurate, and how is it associated. Is it the tartan used by the Lally/Mulally Clan? Were her ancestors a sept of "Tara/Murphy" clan? Could "Tara/Murphy" possibly be a district tartan (ie. all the clans in a given area used that tartan)?

[macwilkin]

My mother's name "Lally" (possibly a derivitive of "Mulally") is somehow associated with the tartan "Tara/Murphy." I am trying to confirm if this is accurate, and how is it associated. Is it the tartan used by the Lally/Mulally Clan? Were her ancestors a sept of "Tara/Murphy" clan? Could "Tara/Murphy" possibly be a district tartan (ie. all the clans in a given area used that tartan)?

How long do you have? :mrgreen:

The Tara Tartan is really a "fashion" tartan, since to my knowledge, it has never been officially recognised by any governing body as "the" Tara tartan. I am not aware of an any Clan Murphy Society either.

In general, the Irish "clan" system is not the same as the Scottish one, although as of recent, many Irish families have adopted the "trappings" of Scottish clan societies, etc. Also, there has been an ongoing issue regarding Irish "clan chiefs" and official recognition by the Irish government of those chiefs -- back in the late '90's, there was a rather large scandal involving the self-proclaimed Chief of the Mccarthys -- a pretender named Terrance Mccarthy proclaimed himself the Chief, the Mccarthy Mor, and was later found out to be a hoax. Since then, a number of Chief's pedigrees have been called into question, and as of late, the Republic is no longer recognizing Chiefs. Peter B. Ellis's Erin's Blood Royal discusses the Irish Chief's and the Mccarthy incident, as well as this web site by Irish genealogist Sean Murphy:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/chiefs/

While some Irish clan societies have adopted their own tartans (the Clan Cian, for example) the majority of folks with Irish descent wear national or district tartans, like the Tara tartan, or the Irish county tartans designed by the House of Edgar in the 1990's.

Matt Newsome has an excellent article about Irish tartans on his blog that is worth perusing. The Tara Tartan is discussed:

http://blog.albanach.org/2005/11/iri...artans-in.html

Cheers,

Todd

[WolfPiper]

Thanks again. Mr. Newsome's site has given me some cites to research and seems to confirm my suspicion that Tara may be a district tartan.


Sadly, most of my internet searches tend to come up wil kilt sellers rather than reseach information.

[pdcorlis]

Yes, sadly the internet has changed from a pretty good reseach tool to a shopping mall.

[WolfPiper]

Yes, sadly the internet has changed from a pretty good reseach tool to a shopping mall.

And unfortunately, I tend to view information provided by sites whose purpose it is to sell me an item with suspicion as it is not in their best intrest to give me information that may get me to rethink my purchase (like that the Irish used tartans rarely or not at all).