Your Best Guess?

[neloon]

Jock,
For your original question, I would have guessed 10% in Scotland, though I'm sure it varies greatly geographically, with age and with "social class".
Alan

[Jock Scot]

Thank you everyone for your best guesses. The thoughts on the kilt numbers for Scotland are about what I had guessed, perhaps I had underestimated a tad? But, as everyone has pointed out there will be local variations based on assorted reasons and that will hold true the world over.

As to the rest of the world, well, in general the best impression I get is, the kilt numbers range from scarce to rare.No real suprise there then. There are two exceptions that I can detect, parts of East and West Canada where the kilt is far from uncommon, which has surprised me as far as the West of Canada is concerned. I might also hazard a guess that parts of New Zealand may have a goodly number of kilts too? I now need to gather my thoughts, before I venture further on this train of thought.

[John_Carrick]

I divide my time between Northern Ireland (70%) and the Republic of Ireland (30%).

About 800,000 of Northern Ireland's population of 1.7 million would have some level of Ulster Scots genealogy. Pipe bands are big here and a fair proportion hire kilts for weddings or big dos/Burns Night. The Ulster Scots Agency promotes cultural events where kilts will appear. You will see very few kilts otherwise and my wild guess would be that less than 1% would be kilt owners, which would be around 8000 people if correct. There are two kilt suppliers in Belfast and they seem to do a good trade, so maybe there are more.

I would guess the proportion of kilt owners/wearers in the Republic would be close to nil statistically, perhaps 1000 in 4.7 million or 0.02%. Complete guess of course but it is really low. There are loads of pipe bands, highland dress is not uncommon for weddings and the like. Kilts for Irish dancing were once compulsory for boys, but now virtually unknown. Kilts are seen as Scottish clothing, although they have featured in Irish culture.

[Pleater]

I have been in some gatherings where there might be 5 to 10 percent of the men in kilts.
The last one was the Swanage Folk festival last year, where several sides, despite being English had either all or most of the men, both dancers and musicians, in kilts.
There are usually several percent of men kilted at the Sidmouth folk festival - it is earlier in the year than Swanage and perhaps the kilt is not so popular due to the heat of early August on the South coast of England.
By the time the Swanage event comes around rain and wind are to be expected.
On a normal day, however, there are no kilted men around.

Anne the Pleater