Clan Mackenzie

The first Mackenzies are not documented well enough to settle where they came from. Wikipedia's article on the clan sets out two accounts: descent from Gilleoin of the Aird, a Gaelic figure of the early twelfth century, and descent from a thirteenth-century Kermac Macmaghan. Older family histories gave the line a Fitzgerald ancestor, and the article says that was dropped when newer evidence appeared. None of these accounts was traced to a primary record here.

The name is Gaelic. The clan's Gaelic name is Clann Choinnich, and the surname is the patronymic MacCoinnich, "son of Coinneach". The clan society does not push the chiefship that far back. It says Alexander the Upright, in the fifteenth century, may have been the first Mackenzie chief in the true sense, because the Kintail line before him is thin: few of its heads left several sons, and Alexander was apparently the first to leave enough male descendants to form the beginnings of one kindred.

Kintail is the country most closely linked to the clan. Wikipedia says the early stronghold was Eilean Donan, held with the MacRaes as constables.

The clan's rise in rank came in the seventeenth century. Wikipedia gives 3 December 1623 as the creation of the earldom of Seaforth, and 7 May 1716 as the date the fifth earl was declared forfeit after the 1715 rising. A later Earl of Seaforth raised a regiment in 1778, and the register records the Mackenzie tartan as the regimental tartan of that unit, the Seaforth Highlanders.

In 1745 the clan split. Lord Fortrose raised Independent Highland Companies for the government, while his cousin George, 3rd Earl of Cromartie, joined the Jacobites and was captured and forfeited. The society's account of Castle Leod, the Cromartie seat, says the estate was restored to his son in 1784.

The chiefship itself had a long gap. The society says the elder line ended with Lord Seaforth's death in 1815 and the chiefship was effectively dormant after 1907 until 1980. The register's own note on the Mackenzie tartan says only that the original line of Kintail ended and the Mackenzies of Cromarty were later recognised as chiefs.

Castle Leod is harder to date than its reputation suggests. The Highland Historic Environment Record quotes conflicting accounts and says it is unclear whether the 1616 date on a dormer marks the original building or an alteration. The society says Sir Roderick Mackenzie of Coigach, who married Margaret MacLeod in 1605, extended and remodelled it in 1606, and that John of Killin, 10th chief, had been granted the lands earlier.

One clan tartan is linked to Clan Mackenzie on this site: Mackenzie, Scottish Register of Tartans reference 267, classed Clan/Family and dated 1778. The register records it as the regimental tartan of the Seaforth Highlanders, raised by the Earl of Seaforth in that year, and notes that its pattern is the same as the MacLeod tartans. The record also lists the pattern in Wilson's 1819 pattern book, in W. and A. Smith's The Clan and Family Tartans of Scotland (1850) and in Clans Originaux (1880), and says a threadcount was recorded by Kenneth F. Mackenzie in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland in 1949.

Two cautions apply. A regimental date of 1778 shows military use of the pattern, not that it was a clan tartan from the start. And a register search for "mackenzie" returns twelve entries, including dress and hunting versions, but none called Ancient or Modern. The register does not say who designed the main pattern.

No sept list is recorded for Clan Mackenzie here. Wikipedia lists dozens of names as septs, but that list was not matched against one published by the society or the chief, and the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there is no central register of septs: each chief decides which surnames the clan accepts. Until a named society or chiefly source is read, the sept names stay off the page.

The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there are no strict rules on who may wear a tartan, that wearing a clan tartan signals allegiance to the chief, and that a new tartan using a clan name needs the chief's approval. Clan Mackenzie has not been found to publish a narrower rule in the sources read here.

The Mackenzie surname page is at /surnames/mackenzie/. It rates the link between the name and the clan probable. The Standing Council treats everyone who shares the chief's surname as a member of the clan, but that is a membership rule, not a finding about ancestry: the name is a patronymic from Mac Coinnich that could arise in more than one family, and the clan's own early descent is unsettled. No sept names are listed here until a society or chiefly list is read.