About

TartanFoundry is a reference site for tartans, clans, surnames and Scottish dress. It exists to answer practical questions, such as what a tartan is, whether a surname has a tartan and how a kilt is measured, with the evidence visible on the page.

What we do

We compile reference pages from published sources and show the evidence on the page. For each tartan, clan or surname we record what the sources establish, how strong that evidence is, and what is not known. We also publish guides to tartan, kilts and etiquette, and two tools. We do not sell anything at present.

• Tartan entries, each with colours, a sett drawn from sourced thread counts where one exists, and a statement of what is documented.
• Clan entries that keep clan, surname and tartan as separate claims.
• Guides to tartan, kilts and etiquette.
• Tools, including the Tartan Finder and the kilt size calculator.

Who we are

Pages are credited to the editorial team, a collective byline. No individual author, reviewer or credential is named on a page unless that person actually wrote or reviewed it, and no page claims first-hand testing that did not happen. We are not affiliated with the Scottish Register of Tartans, the National Records of Scotland, any clan society or any tartan weaver. The site has no shop at present. If that changes, relationships will be disclosed on the pages concerned.

Our story

Work on TartanFoundry began in October 2026, and it started from a rule rather than a topic: every historical claim must point to a source, and a gap must be shown as a gap. The site currently holds 13 tartans, 9 clans and 9 surnames that pass the checks for a public page. New entries are added only when the sources support them.

How the site works

Every historical claim points to a source record, and each record carries an evidence level from A (official registry or primary source) to E (unverified web claim). Where sources disagree, the page says so. Where nothing reliable exists, the field is left empty and the page says the point is not established. The full method is on the methodology page and the rules for writing are on the editorial policy page.

An entry that does not have enough sourced material is not published for search engines. Short, well-sourced pages are preferred to long ones that repeat generic text.

What the evidence behind the site looks like

The source library behind the site holds 554 records from 202 publishers. Not every record is cited yet: a page lists only the sources its own claims rely on. Of the whole library, 196 records come from registries, archives, museums, historical societies and clan organisations (levels A and B). The rest are specialist references and commercial sources, which are graded lower and are not used alone for a statement of fact.

Sources we draw on

These organisations publish much of the material the entries rely on. Linking to them is not an endorsement by them, and they have not reviewed this site.

• Scottish Register of Tartans, the official register of tartan designs.
• National Records of Scotland, surname statistics and archive guidance.
• Court of the Lord Lyon, heraldry and the recognition of chiefs.
• Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs, guidance on clan membership.
• Scottish Tartans Museum, tartan history.
• National Library of Scotland, Scottish traditional culture.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, dated objects and dress.
• Dictionary of the Scots Language, the history of words such as glengarry and bonnet.

Errors and corrections

Historians, clan associations and readers who spot a mistake can write to [email protected]. How a report is handled is described on the corrections page.