More on Septs

[Nick the DSM]

But to add to the confusion the Morrison's of Perthshire are specifically mentioned as a sept of the Clan Buchanan. But how a Morrison family living here in the USA for, say, 200 years is supposed to know his family came from Perthshire I'll never know. So I just send all the Morrisons over to the Clan Morrison tent.

See, this is how septs confuse people!

This is exactly the kind of thing that got me pondering. I have 5 separate direct ancestors (so far!), that have either Morrison or Morison spellings. They were living in Buchan and Banff in the 1700s and 1800's, not Perthshire ot the Western isles. But there again, Morrison is a very common name, simply meaning "son of Maurice", there are many English families with the surname Morrison who have no Scottish connections at all, in fact under the old spelling Moryson it is a very old English name that arrived with William the Conqueror. It's been pointed out that there were Morysons in Ireland, as Sir Richard Moryson was the Vice-President of Munster, but Moryson was born in England to an old English family, and he returned to England to live out his retirement and die. His son Francis emigrated from England in the 1600's and became Governor of Virginia. Two of his sons, Richard and Robert, emigrated to Virginia too.

So, hypothetically, some Virginian Morrisons could go to a USA highland games and see information that might make them think they were of Gaelic Highland extract, and buy some kilts, etc, while in fact it is the blood of Normans, Vikings, Angles and Saxons that courses through their veins.

I do see this kind of thing happening a lot. Even at piping competitions that I help run, we get American tourists come in on a fairly regular basis, (and by that I mean maybe 2 to 4 a day), saying "my surname is XXXXXXXXXXXXX, what tartan am I entitled to wear". If that question gets asked at a piping competition, I can only imagine that it gets asked far more frequently at a tartan shop.


Ultimately I think the whole "sept" business could be a bit of harmless fun, (as many in Scotland view the whole business of kilt wearing/Clan membership, to be honest), but I meet many who take the whole thing as if it is gospel truth and it does kind of sadden me on two levels:
1. People are being taken advantage of.
2. People are happy to be taken advantage of just so long as it gives them a sense of belonging to something that they want to be part of, for whatever personal reasons they may have.

But that's just human nature, I guess. We are all still tribal somewhere deep within ourselves. We demonstrate this in many different ways, including joining forums like this where the thing that unites is is a bittie of coloured cloth we buckle round our waists.

Cheers to you all.

That's where it gets messy. Names are all over the place in Britain and Ireland even Gilmore is found in Ireland as an Irish name. Only reason I know that I'm Scottish when my family came from Ireland was that they were sons of Scottish settlers. It almost seems like hit and miss sometimes with other ethnics taking the names, even English or Welsh may have a certain surname that is usually Scottish.