Jock said it best. Apparently my family, Christie, are a sept of Farquharson. Despite this, all attempts to follow the family history lead to nowhere near the "lands" of Farquharson.

If you look here it gives some ideas of the origin but to be honest all it tells me is that my family are most likely of Norse origin or at some stage in the distant past we had a particularly fervent Christian as an ancestor and wanted Christ in his name.

I am still trying to find out if in fact our family didn't start as some form of Gilchrist. It wouldn't be hard to take the step when Anglicising to drop the "Gil" and maintain the "christ" part.

I reckon even if your name is a clan name there is no proof that some ancestor was apart of that group or was anglicised to the same name or adopted it on whim for some reason or another.

I must say though that looking through family history is fascinating and worth every effort.