Kennedy ModernClan Kennedy
The name is Gaelic, from Old Irish Cinnéidigh, generally read as helmet-headed or ugly-headed. The earliest bearer recorded in Scotland is Gilbert Mac Kenedi, who witnessed a charter concerning Carrick in the reign of William the Lion, between 1165 and 1214. Two sources differ over which charter: one makes it a grant of lands to Melrose Abbey, the other a fishing grant on the River Doon. They agree on the man, the district and the reign, and this page goes no further than that. The tradition that the Kennedys came from Ireland and descend from the Cinnéidigh of Ormond is legend, not record.
The Kennedys were the dominant kindred of Carrick, the southern district of Ayrshire. Dunure Castle on the coast was the early seat, and Cassillis near Maybole came to the family about 1360. David Kennedy, third Lord Kennedy, was created Earl of Cassillis in 1509, and the Cassillis line became the chiefly line. Much of the clan’s sixteenth-century violence was internal, a long rivalry between Cassillis and the Kennedys of Bargany rather than a feud with an outside clan. David Kennedy, tenth Earl of Cassillis, commissioned Robert Adam to build Culzean Castle on the Ayrshire cliffs, and died unmarried on 18 December 1792. Culzean has since passed to the National Trust for Scotland and is not the chief’s seat. One correction is worth making, because it appears everywhere: the Kennedys descend from the comital family of Carrick, but the Earldom of Carrick itself passed to the Bruces and then to the Crown, and is held today by the heir to the throne.
The Kennedy tartan
The register holds eight Kennedy entries. Four are filed as clan or family tartans — Kennedy, Kennedy #2, Kennedy #3 and Kennedy (Irish) — and each carries a different number in the older collections, which argues that they are four genuinely different threadcounts rather than colourways of one, though without access to the threadcounts we cannot prove it. None of the four has a designer or a date recorded. Two more are dress tartans from named commercial sources: Kennedy Dress from the Edinburgh kiltmakers Hugh MacPherson, which the register files under Name rather than Clan/Family, and Kennedy Dress (Pendleton) from the American mill Pendleton Woolen Mills, which the register files as a fashion tartan. The remaining two are personal tartans registered in 2025 for named individuals and are not clan wear.
Kennedy is not in the Vestiarium Scoticum. The book’s full list of seventy-five plates contains no Kennedy entry, and the nearest thing to one is Clankenjie, which is MacKenzie. So the usual Sobieski Stuart attribution simply does not apply here. Nor could we tie any Kennedy sett to Wilsons of Bannockburn, to the Smith brothers’ Authenticated Tartans of 1850, or to any named weaver or clan commission.
A note on honesty: we cannot document a date for any Kennedy clan sett and will not invent one. The register’s “Date Recorded: Not Specified” against these entries reflects the bulk transfer of the older Scottish Tartans Society and Scottish Tartans World Register collections into the national register when it opened in 2009; it is not evidence of age, and no Kennedy sett predates the commercial era. There are no Modern, Ancient, Weathered or Muted Kennedy registrations — those are weaver dye palettes applied to the registered threadcounts. And Kennedy Dress (Pendleton) is a twentieth-century American mill design, not the clan’s dress tartan.
Clan facts
| Chief | The Marquess of Ailsa — David Thomas Kennedy, ninth Marquess of Ailsa, Earl of Cassillis and Lord Kennedy, Chief of the Name and Arms of Kennedy, who succeeded his brother the eighth Marquess in January 2015. The chiefship has not been dormant. Several retailers still name the eighth Marquess, who died on 15 January 2015 |
|---|---|
| Motto | Avise la fin — “Consider the end”. Some sites print Avise le fin; the better sources give la |
| Plant badge | Not securely recorded. Oak is given by one source only, and at least one other site prints the heraldic crest, a dolphin naiant, in the plant badge field, which is a confusion of two different things |
| Lands | Carrick, Ayrshire: Dunure, Cassillis near Maybole, Culzean and Greenan. The Gaelic form of the name is Ceannaideach; MacUalraig belongs to the separate Lochaber Kennedys and is not the Carrick form |
