Tartans and What They Mean

by Two Chums on April 8, 2013

This being “Scotland Week”, Americans and Canadians alike are celebrating their Scottish heritage in all sorts of ways. Last Saturday, in New York, there was the Tartan Parade where people in all sorts of tartans and bands of bagpipes and drums walked the streets.Your Two Chums thought it would be fun to do a few Posts this week on things Scottish and we start, today, with talking about tartans and what they mean.

What is a tartan? In many countries today, the pattern of interlocking stripes called a tartan is often mistakenly known as “plaid.” Plaide actually comes from the Gaelic word for a blanket, and the correct use of the word refers to a large length of fabric, as is used in Highland dress. More often than not, these plaids were made from a cloth with a tartan pattern and so the confusion began!

Tartan has an ancient history. It dates back to 3000 BC but in Scotland, the earliest known tartan dates back to the third and fourth century AD. Although it could be found all over the world, only in Scotland did tartan take on a cultural role.

By the end of the eighteenth century, tartan had become very much part of the Scottish culture and large scale commercial weavers had taken up the production of tartan. One very well known firm, William Wilson & Sons of Bannockburn, was begun around 1765 and became quite successful, being the sole supplier of tartan cloth to the Highland Regiments. Because they were producing cloth in such large quantities, they developed standard colors and patterns early on. At first they assigned numbers to identify the patterns, but soon began to give them names. These not only included names of Highland clans, but also town names, and some fancy names as well! Originally, these names did not represent anything in particular. The names were just very helpful in the organizing and selling of them. As time went on, people felt that these names represented actual connections to these clans and that is really how the naming of tartans started!

Now, not only do clans have tartans but towns, companies, etc. In fact, if you are interested, go to The Scottish Registry of Tartans. You can find out here if your family has a tartan already, what it is and, if you do not find a tartan that is attached to your family name, you no doubt can create one! What fun!

Last week, the Duchess of Cambridge was in Scotland with her husband, William, and each time she was seen, she was wearing some type of tartan. Whether she wore more, or less, tartan, she incorporated a bit of tartan into whatever she was wearing which added a wonderful “pop”!