Clan Buchanan

The traditional origin is an Ulster king, Anselan O Kyan, said to have reached Argyll in 1016 and been rewarded with Buchanan lands. The clan society itself rejects this. Its history page quotes a clan officer saying it is not accurate, and another society page says YDNA testing has disproved descent from an Irish prince, leaving the origin unknown.

The documented start is a charter. In 1225 Malduin, Earl of Lennox, granted the island of Clairinch in Loch Lomond to Absalon, also called Anselan, for a yearly rent of a pound of wax. Alexander II confirmed it in 1231 with fishing rights in the loch. The island became known as the heart of the clan, and its Gaelic name Clar Innis is the clan's war cry.

The name Buchanan is territorial, from the lands and parish, though the society notes that early chiefs bore the form MacAuselan, after Anselan. Wikipedia gives two suggested Gaelic sources for the place name, "son of the canon" and "house of the canon", and neither is settled.

The society's timeline credits the Buchanans with helping Robert the Bruce in 1306, and says Sir Alexander Buchanan killed the Duke of Clarence at Baugé in 1421. It records the death of the chief's son Patrick at Flodden in 1513 and the clan's presence at Pinkie in 1547. These are the society's statements and were not checked against contemporary records.

The decline came in the seventeenth century. Sir George Buchanan commanded Stirlingshire royalist forces in 1650 and 1651 and was captured at Inverkeithing. The last chief of the main line, John Buchanan, ran into debt and, according to the society, sold Highland lands to the Marquess of Montrose around 1680 and lost the Barony of Buchanan. Clairinch passed to Montrose in 1681. The society says it is unclear precisely what services were involved or what the eviction of the estate meant, and Wikipedia gives 1681 as the year the last direct chief died without male heirs.

Clairinch returned to Buchanan hands in 1934, when William George Buchanan bought it, and it passed to the Buchanan Society, a charity, around 1939 and 1940 with the condition that it be kept as a sanctuary. The society names the cadet branches of Leny, Arnprior, Spittal, Auchmar, Achleshie, Ardenconnel, Carbeth, Powis and Ibert.

The Scottish Register of Tartans treats Buchanan - 1850 as the clan tartan. The record says the pattern originated with Wilsons of Bannockburn and that W. and A. Smith printed it in The Clan and Family Tartans of Scotland (1850) with mid-blue replacing the original light blue, calling it universally considered the genuine Buchanan tartan. It adds that Archibald Buchanan of Catrinebank, Ayrshire, wore it, and that the chief authorised it as the clan tartan in 2022.

The register also holds a Buchanan - 1842 entry taken from the Vestiarium Scoticum, a work whose claimed sources were never produced, so that pattern has no early documentary support. The society's dress guide refers to Modern, Ancient and Weathered, and Hunting versions, and calls the Modern the primary recommendation. Those names were not matched to individual register records here, so the page does not describe how they differ.

The society publishes a table of more than 50 surnames in sept groups, headed by names such as Leny, Watson, Gilbert, Gibson, Harper, MacAslan, MacColman, MacKinlay, Yule and Richardson. The groups listed here follow that table. The society also says accepting a family as a sept is the chief's prerogative and that its list keeps changing.

The MacAslan group has the clearest link, because its names are forms of the early chiefs' own name. The others are marked uncertain: nineteenth-century clan societies linked many surnames to clans in lists that were sometimes loosely founded, and the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there is no central sept register. A name on the list shows what the society accepts, not how any family descends.

The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there are no strict rules on who may wear a tartan and that wearing a clan tartan signals allegiance to the chief. The Clan Buchanan Society's dress guide is addressed to Buchanan clan members and does not, in the text read, restrict anyone else from wearing the tartan.

The surname page for Buchanan is at /surnames/buchanan/. The link between surname and clan is rated probable there: Buchanan is a territorial name from the lands on the east shore of Loch Lomond, and the Standing Council counts holders of the chief's surname as members, which is a rule of membership and not proof of descent. A place name can be taken by unrelated people living on the land, so a Buchanan is not shown to descend from the chiefs. The society's table of more than 50 other surnames is dealt with under septs above, and the MacAslan group is the best supported of them; the others are uncertain.