Clans, Families and Kinship Structures in Scotland—An Essay

Abstract

Anyone who has visited a Scottish Games or Gathering in North America will be struck by the number of Clan societies occupying tents around the Games ground and participating in a “Parade of Tartans”. Yet, a substantial number of these do not represent Highlands or Borders Clans, but are really descendants of Lowland Families. The “Clan” appellation has been applied wrongly to all of Scotland, as though this were the universal or at least the dominant form of social/kinship organization. The cultural appendages of that—kilts, tartans and Gaelic language—are considered uniformly Scottish. In reality, the clan system was a minority social structure in Scotland. The uncritical adoption of the term “Clan” ignores and minimizes the larger and more important Lowland Family structure. The nature of these two structures—Clan and Family—are compared and contrasted, and a case made for greater recognition of the Lowland Family as the pre-eminent form of social structure in Scotland. This has implications for, inter alia, genealogy, Scottish cultural and language studies, ethnicity and Y-DNA testing.