Clan Campbell

The name began as a nickname. David Sellar's paper, reproduced by the Clan Campbell Society (North America), reads Caimbeul as Gaelic for "twisted mouth" and notes that the p was added only in the later fifteenth century. The same paper rejects the story that the family descends from a Norman knight called de Campo Bello, quoting W. F. Skene that it had no early authority.

The earliest documented Campbell in that account is Gillespic, recorded in 1263. His son Colin witnessed a charter about 1281 and Colin's son Neill a grant in 1282. Skene placed the family's original seat in the district of Lochawe, and a 1369 charter of David II names Duncan M'Duine as a progenitor, which fits the earlier Gaelic name O'Duibhne. The style Mac Cailein Mòr comes from Colin Mòr, who was killed in the 1290s.

What the sources do not settle is the older pedigree before the thirteenth century. Sellar worked from three surviving Gaelic genealogies, and this page does not choose between them.

Wikipedia says the Campbells fought at Bannockburn in 1314, and that Colin Campbell became Earl of Argyll in 1457. Archibald Campbell, 10th Earl, was made first Duke of Argyll on 21 June 1701.

The cadet lines grew in parallel. Historic Environment Scotland describes the Glenorchy Campbells building Kilchurn Castle at the head of Loch Awe in the mid-1400s. Sir John Campbell of Glenorchy, 1st Earl of Breadalbane, made it a garrison in 1689, and the barracks he added is described as the oldest surviving barracks on the British mainland. Cawdor and Loudoun also became earldoms, according to the clan society.

Campbells appear on both sides of the best-known episodes of the period. Wikipedia reports Campbell soldiers under Robert Campbell of Glenlyon at the Glencoe massacre of 1692, and Campbell companies on the government side in 1715 and at Culloden in 1746. The Black Watch Museum records Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell and Colin Campbell of Skipness among the commanders of the independent companies raised from 1725. None of this shows that any one person named Campbell took part.

The clan society lists four official Campbell tartans: Campbell (also called Ancient Campbell), Campbell of Cawdor, Campbell of Breadalbane and Campbell of Loudoun. The main Campbell tartan is the Black Watch sett in lighter shades. The society says the present Duke of Argyll approves it and that the past seven chiefs disavowed a "Campbell of Argyll" sett, citing Alastair Campbell of Airds's 1985 work on the Campbell tartan.

That is a clan-society account. The Scottish Register of Tartans files Black Watch (Government) as a military tartan dated 1739 and says the design is believed to have originated then, not that it was a Campbell design. The Cockburn Collection of about 1810 to 1815 labelled one specimen of it "Campbell Argyll", with others labelled Grant, Munro and Sutherland. The Black Watch Museum says research points to an origin between Strathspey and Easter Ross, tied to the Munros and Grants. The Black Watch sett and the Campbell tartan are therefore linked, but the sources do not show the clan originated it.

The Campbell surname page is at /surnames/campbell/. It rates the link between name and clan probable, with a limit: the earliest documented bearers, from 1263, are the Lochawe family whose chiefs became the Earls and Dukes of Argyll, so the connection holds for that family and not automatically for every person named Campbell. The name began as a Gaelic nickname, Caimbeul, and spread widely through emigration. No sept list is recorded for this clan page, so no other surnames are tied to it here.