why?

[DWFII]

I have a question that is directed mostly at the Scottish members of the forum...including but not limited to members of any organization that deals in Scots lineage or heritage.

My ancient family name is MacSween. According to all the legends the MacSweens lost their lands in Argyle shortly after Bannockburn and most of them migrated to Ireland where they became MacSweeney and/or eventually just Sweeney.

But I see MacSweens who are prominent in the news who are obviously Scots. There is even a brand of haggis that is MacSween. And the STA has a reproduction of a painting of Sir Kenneth MacSween on its webpage. The man who posed for that painting was obviously a clan chieftain or someone very prominent and it was, going by the provenance if not the clothing depicted, at least five centuries after Bannockburn.

Now, I have been told that the MacQueens are supposedly MacSweens with an anglisized version of the name and there are MacQueens in Skye, if nowhere else.

But with all the MacSweens (original spelling) who still dwell in Scotland (obviously many of the MacSweens escaped under the notice of Robert the Bruce and the Campbells) and the ancient lineage (the oldest stone castle in Scotland is Castle Sween on Loch Sween), why is there no MacSween clan, no dedicated MacSween tartan and so forth?

Or is the MacQueen tartan and clan the recognized descendants?

[Finn]

I can't speak for the Scots line, but in Ireland the family became known as galloglas with a long martial history.

[An t-Ileach]

The MacQueens (various spellings of the Gaelic Mac Shuibhne) are listed in some of the tartan books, and seem originally to have been a sept of Clan Donald/Lords of the Isles although in the 1600s some of them appear to have signed the Clan Chattan bond.

I have a clans and their tartans book from the 1940s which says "on the death in 1881 of John Fraser Macqueen, then regarded as Chief, the succession to the chiefship, but not to the estate, opened to his only surviving brother, Lachlan, a distinguished officer in the East India Company, who died in 1896. He was succeeded in the chiefship by his only son, Donald, now understood to be resident in New Zealand, but no steps have been taken to establish his claim to the chiefship and relative signs armorial".

This sounds as though it must have been actually composed around World War I. I suppose an approach to the Court of the Lord Lyon might throw light on the present situation.

MacSween's haggises are really very good. I reckon that they're the best of all the commercially available ones.

[Jock Scot]

I am very sorry, but I have no idea.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I think you are maybe making too much distinction between MacSween and MacQueen. You seem to view "MacSween" as the older, or original spelling, and "MacQueen" as a modern Anglicized form.

In truth, both "MacQueen" and "MacSween" are Anglicized names. The Gaelic is Mac Shuibhne. (And even the Gaelic spelling will be different depending upon the era). So far as I am aware they are both considered perfectly acceptible ways to Anglicize the Gaelic name.

[DWFII]

I think you are maybe making too much distinction between MacSween and MacQueen. You seem to view "MacSween" as the older, or original spelling, and "MacQueen" as a modern Anglicized form.

In truth, both "MacQueen" and "MacSween" are Anglicized names. The Gaelic is Mac Shuibhne. (And even the Gaelic spelling will be different depending upon the era). So far as I am aware they are both considered perfectly acceptible ways to Anglicize the Gaelic name.

Matt,

That's a really good point. And even though I knew the Gaelic spelling I hadn't considered it from quite that angle till now.

That said, I wonder about usage. Why it is Castle Sween and not Castle Queen? Why is it Loch Sween and not Loch Queen? And given that it is indeed Loch Sween, etc., why is it MacQueen for the clan name and tartan...especially when there seem to be so many MacSweens around?

I guess I'm curious more than anything. Running around the High Desert Games yesterday I ran across the Mackenzie tent and they had a big sign that said one of the Mackenzie septs, or allied clans, was MacQueenie. First time I'd heard that. But it raised a question.

I also have encountered the assertion that after Bannockburn some the MacSweens who remained in Scotland, became MacEwens (?!?)--presumably another anglicization of the name.

It would have been simpler if they had all gotten together and decided on a common pronunciation.

[gilmore]

The only way to be assured of which clan your ancestors were a part of, or allied with, is through genealogical research. The rest is conjecture and speculation, sometimes based on the flimsiest of evidence.

Genealogical research is indeed time-consuming and often takes years, decades and generations, but is becoming easier due to the internet and the growing interest in genealogy. Good research means documenting the ancestry, generation by generation, starting with oneself and going backward in time, without skipping over a generation, and ignoring the appeal of conjecture and fantasy.

There is one exception these days, and that is Y DNA testing. It is still in its infancy, and is more useful in giving clues where not to research than in proving descents, but can be helpful. This could be especially true in trying to associate oneself with a clan. So many clans associations these days---supported by tartan merchants----claim the same or similar surnames as their own septs that they can't all be accurate. In fact, quite a few are bogus. Take a look at www.familytreedna.com and go to their FAQ. It explains genetic genealogy rather well.

To see an example of falsely claimed septs, compare their Gunn Surname Project with Gunn Septs Surname Project. The former shows two main families that likely diverged from a common ancestor not too many centuries ago. The latter is a motley collection of surnames with DNA results that are all over the place.

[An t-Ileach]

... about usage. Why it is Castle Sween and not Castle Queen? Why is it Loch Sween and not Loch Queen? And given that it is indeed Loch Sween, etc., why is it MacQueen for the clan name and tartan...especially when there seem to be so many MacSweens around?...

It has to do with Gaelic grammar.

The base word Suibhne is, I guess, a Gaelic phonetic rendering of Sweyn/Svegn. In the genitive and vocative, and after certain words, it would get lenited ('aspirated' in older usage) into Shuibhne.

However, the 'sh' combination in Gaelic is - to all intents and purposes - silent (there's an ever so slight breathing) and so the following vowel gets tacked on to the tail end of the preceding word: so, mac + Shuibhne becomes 'macqueennya' which is how, I suppose, the MacQueenie arises.

But a hanging vowel sound like that tends to get suppressed, so one ends up with MacQueen. However, in older Gaelic/Erse this lenition/aspiration didn't happen in quite the same way, and so there's a survival of this where the 'Mac" and the 'Suibhne' stay as they are - giving MacSween.

Just why 'Loch' doesn't take the genitive in a similar way is a bit beyond my philology, but I can't think off hand of an example where it does: there's a Loch Gruinard, and not a Loch Ghruinaird, on Islay, and Loch Fìne (Loch Fyne) in Argyll rather than Loch Fhìne.

[sirdaniel1975]

But I see MacSweens who are prominent in the news who are obviously Scots. There is even a brand of haggis that is MacSween. And the STA has a reproduction of a painting of Sir Kenneth MacSween on its webpage. The man who posed for that painting was obviously a clan chieftain or someone very prominent and it was, going by the provenance if not the clothing depicted, at least five centuries after Bannockburn.

a little side note.. the Haggis maker to the Queen is a MacSween and his cousin is one of the volunteer historians at the Scottish Tartans Museum.. Carl McSween.. So Carl used to say.