Your Best Guess?

[Jock Scot]

There is a very interesting thread going on at the moment and from it some questions have appeared in my mind. So without hi jacking that particular thread I need your best guesses to this question.

What do you think is the proportion of MALE TARTAN kiltwears to the rest of the males in your country? If we could exclude the military, pipers and pipe band members and those that may hire the kilt from time to time, it would help as I am trying to compare, as best we can, like with like and no we have no need to split hairs with our estimations and before anyone asks, no, I don't know the answer!

My best guess for Scotland would be around one kilt wearing male(does not have to be full time) in say 150/200 males.I am open for other Scots thoughts on this?

So for you out there have a go.-------

USA?
Canada?
Australia?
New Zealand?
South Africa?
England?
?

[Spartan Tartan]

Certainly I think it varies from place to place. That said, I have lived in quite a few places within the USA. In all my time, I have seen VERY few other kilted gentlemen. The only time I can safely predict is at a Highland Games, yet surprisingly there are reletively few kilts even at those in some areas!

I would guess, but this is pure speculation, that in the USA it would be closer to the order of 1 kilt wearing male for every 2000 men? If even that high...

Again, some pockets may be different. I base that loosely on city populations where i have lived and how many kilted men I have seen.

Note: According to the most recent census there are 1.05 million people in Rhode Island. When I attended the games in June, there were at MOST 300 kilted gentlemen there. In fact, most men were not. Additionally, most of the men in attendance were from the neighboring states... But even so, 300/1,050,000 works out to be 1 in 3500ish.

My personal experience would suggest this is about right. Of course, that is just my 2 cents worth.

[MacRobert's Reply]

This is completely a finger in the wind, but I would guess that there are rather more kilt owners and occasional wearers in Scotland than Jock's estimate. This is based on a very limited set of samples: the proportion of guests apparently wearing their own kilts at weddings. In a congregation of 60, I would normally see about five or six men in their own kilts (and many more in rented kit). Assuming equal numbers of men and women in the congregation, this would suggest that about 18% of Scotsmen own and occasionally wear the kilt. However, I also suspect that there are age and social class differences with more owned kilts among older men and the middle class.

[OC Richard]

Yes here the proportion would be infinitesimal.

First off, people of any European descent are in the minority. A fraction of those would self-identify as Scottish or Irish, and a fraction of those would own and wear kilts. I probably see, at our various local Games and other Scottish-themed events, practically the entire kilted community, and if you leave out bands, pipers, and utilikilts, you're left with a few dozen, out of a population of millions.

But you've gone and done it! It's exactly the sort of thing that I like to research, and it's easy to do so on the internet.

EDIT: well here's a map of the distribution of Scottish descent people in the USA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ce...ted_States.gif

California is 37 million with 16 million being 'white non-latino' and 622,000 self-identifying as Scottish ancestry and 410,000 as 'Scotch-Irish' ancestry. (This is spongy ground because most of the people doing the self-identifying don't know what 'Scotch-Irish' means; they assume it refers to a mix of Scottish and Irish ancestry rather than to Ulster Scots. A girl once told me that her family was from "Scotch-Ireland".)

A million Scots and 'Scotch-Irish' is a load of people but I doubt that a very large number of these are non-piper non-utilikilt kiltwearers. I couldn't quickly find self-identifying California 'Irish' numbers but in the USA as a whole they're over four times the 'Scottish' numbers. (This might have more to do with the nature of self-indentification than it does with genetic reality.)

[unixken]

My own town has a population of 49K people. Other than myself, I have seen just one other person (a non-piper) wear a kilt on a day not otherwise part of the local Irish festival or other such event. I do have a friend who owns a sheep farm in an adjacent town of just 500 people, who often wears her Utilikilt. But she's the only other person I know of, in this area.

[McMurdo]

I have seen the kilt out and about from time to time, however most of those sightings have been of other members of this forum. As for a per capita estimate I would have no idea how to calculate that.

[cessna152towser]

I think most of the male population of Scotland will wear a kilt at some time in their life, even if only on a few special occasions.
I have seen every male in my terraced block of four houses kilted at some time or other. The man in the southmost house I have only seen kilted once, when he was on his way to a wedding, possibly a hired kilt, but the other three householders are all kilt owners. I have quite a collection of kilts, Mackie next door owns two which he wears quite often and Graham in the northmost house owns a kilt which he occasionally wears, usually only for a formal occasion, though I have sometimes seen him wearing it while walking his dog.
Full time kilt wearers are another matter. I wore a kilt almost every day for several years but since I retired from my profession and took part time work as a school bus driver there is less opportunity. I believe that in this town of around 15,000 people, there is only one gentleman who can be seen wearing a kilt on a daily basis. I am working on him to join xmarks!

[Calgacus]

Good question, Jock. I suppose it's something akin to 'How long is a piece of string?'

Your definition of wearers, including occasional wearers, but excluding hirers and pipers/band members approximates pretty closely to 'kilt owners'. Unless you are excluding 'owners who only wear it to special occasions of the types where others might rent'.

I'm with MacRobert, I think you might be underestimating. At my work's annual dinner dance, a large majority attend kilted, and I'd say the majority of those own their own kilts.

I realise however that I live in a relatively affluent area which also seems to have a relatively high level of national pride and a low level of the 'Scottish cringe'. This is not representative of all Scotland.

On the other hand, given that you could stand on Union Street a long time before you saw a man walk past in a kilt during the day, I'd say that the vast majority of these aforementioned kilt owners only wear them to formal or special occasions.

So... I suppose it all comes down to exactly how you define 'kiltwearer', and if I had to put a figure on it I'd say somewhere between 5% and 20% of Scottish males occasionally wear a tartan kilt that they didn't rent.

If however I'm wildly wrong it would not surprise me in the least!

[Father Bill]

I wouldn't have the foggiest notion how to calculate that, but I note that surprisingly often I'll see someone kilted whom I've known for years and had no notion would have or wear such.

[The Wizard of BC]

I live and work in the city of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. This is a very unusual and unique place


To start, here are a few statistics.

Population of the Greater Victoria Capital District in 2011 was 359,991. Victoria ranks as the 15th largest metropolitan area in Canada by population.

Of these;
131,670 are of English ethnicity.
97,275 Scottish (27%)
56,665 Irish
34,345 German
29,440 French
13,805 Dutch
12,770 Ukrainian
11,720 Chinese
10,230 1st Peoples (aboriginal)

Our male to female breakdown is 47% males/53% females. Slightly higher than the national average.

I have for the past 12 years run a kilt shop in Victoria. For the past 8 years I have operated the only brick and mortar kilt shop on Vancouver Island.
Basically if someone in this area wants a kilt they usually stop into my shop.

If we eliminate the Canadian Scottish Regiment, and the 11 pipe bands in the local area, including the Greater Victoria Police Pipe Band of 185 members, and the four schools that use the kilt as a school uniform (for girls mostly) and taking into account the number of kilts I have sold over the past 12 years to local customers, I can give you a pretty good guess at the percentage of male kilt wearers to the general population.

My estimate would be 1 kilt owner (who actually own their own kilt and wear it at least twice a year) to every 46 men in the general population.

I am taking into account those who own more than one kilt and those who own more than 10 kilts and wear one at least once a week. I personally know over 25 men who wear the kilt almost every day.

As I said Victoria is a unique place. For its population we have what is reported to be the largest, per capita, Highland Games in Canada. They are the oldest in Canada. Granted, our 6,500 daily attendance for our 2 day games is small compared to Fergus or Grandfather Mt. but in relation to our smaller population, a pretty respectable turnout.
But at our Games those in trousers are the minority.

It is not unusual to go downtown Victoria, sit at a sidewalk cafe, and see two kilts walk by in the time it takes to have your coffee.

Many of our customers own both Tartan and solid colored kilts. But as specified I am only counting the Tartan kilts.