Which tartan for MacClive?

[creagdhubh]

That's absolutely correct, and even when you know where your ancestors emigrated from, it's just an educated guess because people moved around Scotland.

Case in point, I know I'm a MacDonald of Clanranald because my father told me and his father told him and all of our distant cousins know also etc... However, my ancestors came to Nova Scotia from the Isle of Lewis which is MacLeod of Lewis territory, not Clanranald territory. The Clanranald were centred around Caste Tioram, Arisaig, South Uist etc... so even though Lewis was controlled by the Lordship of the Isles long ago, it was never really Clanranald territory and the MacLeods had ascended to control it for quite some time before 1804.

My point is that if I just know I was a MacDonald from the Isle of Lewis and didn't have the Clanranald oral tradition, I likely would not have figured it out from those clues alone.

It's really tough to reconstruct it once the tradition is broken in a family. I'd hazard a guess that there are many people who saw there name on a sept list, bought a tartan and were off base about their actual family. Especially people with physically descriptive or occupational names which pop up everywhere. Add that to the fact that people can have the same surname but be coincidentally descended from different people with the same name.

That's exactly right, Nathan. Excellent points here, mate.

[David]

Hate to put a spanner in the works regarding the gaelic origin of the name Livingston; and hence MacClive. According to the the Livingston Alive web site, the name has saxon origins. "Livingston Village gets its name from the Saxon named Leving or Leuing & from Old English tun or toun meaning settlement".

[ctbuchanan]

The National Trust registry doesn't show the name MacClive (or similar) in the 1881 or 1998 census as having more than 100 instances in the U.K. so it's very rare indeed.
I did come across a thread elsewhere that links it to Stewart of Appin but then quotes the Stewart Society as saying it is not a sept of theirs and that it is probably Irish.
The Surname Database doesn't list the name

[Domehead]

Following this with great interest. Mr. MacDonald, Nathan and Kyle - you've done a wonderful job sorting things.

Ryan

[Nathan]

Hate to put a spanner in the works regarding the gaelic origin of the name Livingston; and hence MacClive. According to the the Livingston Alive web site, the name has saxon origins. "Livingston Village gets its name from the Saxon named Leving or Leuing & from Old English tun or toun meaning settlement".

I came across that claim also. Well done finding that and thanks for bringing it into the discussion. Honestly, I don't think this throws much of a spanner in the works. We know that the Gaelic MacLeay clan often translated their name to "Livingston" and, along with McKinleys, come from Livingston. The fact that the town may have been named after a Saxon named Leving, wouldn't preclude a Gaelic speaking clan being subsequently named after the town. The original "Leod" form whom we get Leodhas (Lewis) and the MacLeod clans was probably Scandanavian but the MacLeod clan was definitely Gaelic.

Lets also remember how much of Scotland was at one time Gaelic speaking. Ayrshire isn't so far from Ireland, Galloway or Argyll and was certainly Gaelic at one point. The place names tell the tale. Kilmarnock = Cille Mheàrnaig, Ayr = Inbhir Air, Carrick = A' Charraig, so it's also possible that as Scots became the language of choice, Saxon roots became more desirable than Goidelic ones.

So we see a few competing theories of which Gaelic words (native or transliterated) the family names MacLeay, MacClive, Dunlevy, and Livingston come from but all of them are purported by some to trace back to "Dunnsleibhe" at some point. Is it "leibhe", a Gaelic transliteration of the Saxon Leving or is it "sleibhe" or physician or is it really a brown haired mountain chieftain?

There are lots of possibilities. One thing I've found out about studying Scottish history is that people are liberal publishing "facts" to suit their politics. Separating the myth and folklore from the historical record is indeed a challenge and sometimes it comes down to a coin toss with the two camps entrenched on various positions that have been debated for hundreds of years.

That's what makes it challenging, but it's also what makes it so much fun. There's always a puzzle and you can't always take what you see written at face value. This is even more true if you're reading a coffee table book about tartan or a website written by an enthusiastic lay person.

The unbiased rigour expected of an academic historian has never been expected of the folk historian or seannachie. Moreover, "antiquarians" made a lot of money manufacturing histories and Noble pedigrees for rich land owners in Scotland over the past two hundred plus years, so I suspect we'll spend the next six hundred untangling their creative versions of events if we ever succeed in doing so.

Since the sectarian divide, many families in Ireland and Scotland have re-written their histories to exclude or downplay any connection to their cousins from the other country.

Source documents contemporary to the time are, as always, our best resource, but they are not always at our finger tips.

Thanks to the OP for asking a challenging question that has so far lead to an interesting thread.

[MacCorquodale]

That's absolutely correct, and even when you know where your ancestors emigrated from, it's just an educated guess because people moved around Scotland.

Case in point, I know I'm a MacDonald of Clanranald because my father told me and his father told him and all of our distant cousins know also etc... However, my ancestors came to Nova Scotia from the Isle of Lewis which is MacLeod of Lewis territory, not Clanranald territory. The Clanranald were centred around Caste Tioram, Arisaig, South Uist etc... so even though Lewis was controlled by the Lordship of the Isles long ago, it was never really Clanranald territory and the MacLeods had ascended to control it for quite some time before 1804.

My point is that if I had just known that I was a MacDonald with an ancestor from the Isle of Lewis and didn't have the Clanranald oral tradition in my family, I likely would not have figured it out from those clues alone.

It's really tough to reconstruct it once the clan tradition is broken in a family. I'd hazard a guess that there are many people who saw their name on a sept list, bought a tartan and were off base about their actual family line. Especially people with physically descriptive or occupational names which pop up everywhere and therefore on everyone's list. Add that to the fact that people can have the same surname but be coincidentally descended from different people with the same name.

My father always told me we were related to Robert the Bruce in some fashion as his father told him. So there's that tidbit.

[MacCorquodale]

The National Trust registry doesn't show the name MacClive (or similar) in the 1881 or 1998 census as having more than 100 instances in the U.K. so it's very rare indeed.
I did come across a thread elsewhere that links it to Stewart of Appin but then quotes the Stewart Society as saying it is not a sept of theirs and that it is probably Irish.
The Surname Database doesn't list the name

Yes, that is where I first found it but it was always brought up that we were Scottish and that I was still 100% Scottish due to my mother's family also being Scottish. They were proud of that fact.

I've never heard anything about Irish being in the mix. This mostly coming from my father's family since his side was fiercely proud of being Scottish, since my Grandfather Ian and his siblings were born there.

I'm still new so my posts have to be approved so I couldn't edit my previous post but I also remember my father bringing up a tenuous connection to Mary Queen of scots as well. So, that and the tales of being related to Robert the Bruce in some way would seem to lend to Stewart/ Stewart of Appin being correct?

When I read the wiki on those two clans I remember thinking, "Oh, so this is what my Dad was talking about!"

But then of course, every soldier nowadays was a sniper or ranger and rarely a cook or supply clerk.

Not sure how much stock to put in it but I've found over time most of the things my parents told me about my ancestors has proven to be true.

One of them I though was untrue was that we were related to one of the fathers of bluegrass on my mother's side and that this founder would play at all the family reunions my mother went to.

Well after some research it turns out Dock Boggs is my Great uncle. So, who knows?

[MacCorquodale]

I came across that claim also. Well done finding that and thanks for bringing it into the discussion. Honestly, I don't think this throws much of a spanner in the works. We know that the Gaelic MacLeay clan often translated their name to "Livingston" and, along with McKinleys, come from Livingston. The fact that the town may have been named after a Saxon named Leving, wouldn't preclude a Gaelic speaking clan being subsequently named after the town. The original "Leod" form whom we get Leodhas (Lewis) and the MacLeod clans was probably Scandanavian but the MacLeod clan was definitely Gaelic.

Lets also remember how much of Scotland was at one time Gaelic speaking. Ayrshire isn't so far from Ireland, Galloway or Argyll and was certainly Gaelic at one point. The place names tell the tale. Kilmarnock = Cille Mheàrnaig, Ayr = Inbhir Air, Carrick = A' Charraig, so it's also possible that as Scots became the language of choice, Saxon roots became more desirable than Goidelic ones.

So we see a few competing theories of which Gaelic words (native or transliterated) the family names MacLeay, MacClive, Dunlevy, and Livingston come from but all of them are purported by some to trace back to "Dunnsleibhe" at some point. Is it "leibhe", a Gaelic transliteration of the Saxon Leving or is it "sleibhe" or physician or is it really a brown haired mountain chieftain?

There are lots of possibilities. One thing I've found out about studying Scottish history is that people are liberal publishing "facts" to suit their politics. Separating the myth and folklore from the historical record is indeed a challenge and sometimes it comes down to a coin toss with the two camps entrenched on various positions that have been debated for hundreds of years.

That's what makes it challenging, but it's also what makes it so much fun. There's always a puzzle and you can't always take what you see written at face value. This is even more true if you're reading a coffee table book about tartan or a website written by an enthusiastic lay person.

The unbiased rigour expected of an academic historian has never been expected of the folk historian or seannachie. Moreover, "antiquarians" made a lot of money manufacturing histories and Noble pedigrees for rich land owners in Scotland over the past two hundred plus years, so I suspect we'll spend the next six hundred untangling their creative versions of events if we ever succeed in doing so.

Since the sectarian divide, many families in Ireland and Scotland have re-written their histories to exclude or downplay any connection to their cousins from the other country.

Source documents contemporary to the time are, as always, our best resource, but they are not always at our finger tips.

Thanks to the OP for asking a challenging question that has so far lead to an interesting thread.

Thank you and all the others for all of the help!

Thankfully, my great-grandfather had an easy name to find. So I can always just go with that.

I'd kind of like to have a tartan that represents my father's family for my daughters' weddings, which will be within the next year or so since they are both engaged. I never met my grandfather Ian and my dad passed away before ever meeting my children so it is sort of important to me to get it right and represent my father's side.


Also that link that had the info about MacClive being an official sept of Stewart of Appin, he did claim to have an old registry that showed it.

[Calgacus]

This is a handy website:-

http://forebears.co.uk/surnames

Enter your surname and do a search. Once the results come up, click on the spelling of interest and you get a distribution map showing where the name is common.

Adding to what Nathan said above, researching Scottish history is challenging and fun. There are personal politics and agendas in lots of it, and some of it is simply hardly researched at all, with myths and errors perpetuated because nobody has bothered to look properly. I discovered that whilst looking for the site of Mons Graupius and Ptolemy's Roman map of Scotland.

[Nathan]

This site is also helpful because it has surname variations. McCleave seems to be one.
http://robertson-gorrie.com/document...meVariants.pdf

Regarding your father's pride in being Scottish, there's nothing saying he wasn't Scottish. The question is simply whether his Gaelic speaking ancestors came from the Scottish Gaidhealtacht or crossed over from Northern Ireland. There are families with the same Gaelic name (Dunnshleibhe) in both countries. Also, it certainly doesn't make one less Scottish. If you trace it back, most of the famous Scottish families came to Scotland from somewhere else. There has also always been a steady stream of immigration from Ireland to different parts of Scotland. After a few generations they were indeed Scots, but their names remained Irish.

Interestingly, the Electric Scotland site that claims MacClave and MacCleave are associated with Galloway.

http://www.electricscotland.com/webclans/spellings.htm

http://www.scotclans.com/scottish_cl...y/history.html

http://houseoftartan.co.uk/scottish/searchsurname.asp

I'm just unsure about whether they are saying the Galloway district or clan. So if MacClive is a variation of those names, that seems to point there.

Again, rather than going with a maternal great grandfather, you can always wear the district tartan of Ayrshire where you know your father's family comes from. Galloway is adjacent to Ayrshire so there is a compelling case that we may be getting closer to your particular MacClives/MacClaves.