Buchan ModernClan Buchan
Buchan is a territorial name, taken from the district of Buchan in north-east Aberdeenshire and Banffshire. The earliest secure record of the name is Ricardus de Buchan, clerk to the bishopric of Aberdeen, in 1207; William Buchan held land in Aberdeen before 1281; and Sir Thomas de Boghan gave homage to Edward I in the Ragman Rolls of 1296. The family is commonly said to have held Auchmacoy since the early fourteenth century, but the sources phrase this as belief rather than record: the documentary anchors are 1446, when Andrew Buchan of Achmakwy was appointed to settle the boundaries of St Peter’s Hospital, and 1503, when James IV granted a charter to Andrew Buchan, second of Auchmacoy. The mediaeval earldom of Buchan, held by the Comyns and later by Alexander Stewart, the Wolf of Badenoch, is a separate institution and should not be confused with the family of Auchmacoy.
Thomas Buchan was commissioned colonel in the Earl of Mar’s regiment by James VII in 1686 and, after Killiecrankie in 1689, was appointed commander-in-chief of the Jacobite forces in Scotland. He was defeated at Cromdale on 1 May 1690, fought at Sheriffmuir in 1715 and died in 1721. James Buchan, 14th of Auchmacoy, was recognised as chief by the Lord Lyon in 1830, after which the representation passed through his daughter into the Innes and Sinclair line; the surname was resumed and the chiefship recognised again by warrant of the Lord Lyon in 1949. In the 1960s Captain David Buchan of Auchmacoy, who died on 16 July 2015, successfully petitioned the Lord Lyon to establish the Buchans as a clan in their own right rather than a sept of the Comyns — the decisive act in the family’s modern standing. The present chief is Charles Buchan of Auchmacoy. Published genealogies of the 1949 succession differ in detail and we have not been able to reconcile them.
The Buchan tartan
Buchan has no tartan of its own design. The cloth sold as Buchan is the Cumming, or Comyn, sett, recorded under the joint names Cumming Comyn Buchan and marketed variously as Cumming Hunting, Cumming Glenorchy and MacIntyre and Glenorchy. Kinloch Anderson states that the Buchan tartan is also known as Cumming/Buchan/MacIntyre and Glenorchy and that it was adopted by the chief in the 1960s, in recognition of the two families’ long association. The sett itself is attributed to around 1790; that attribution is not a registration date, and the documented Buchan connection begins with the adoption in the 1960s. No Wilsons of Bannockburn attribution and no Vestiarium Scoticum attribution exists for Buchan.
A note on honesty: Buchan Modern, Ancient, Weathered and Muted are colourways of that single Cumming sett, not four tartans, and no Buchan sett predates the commercial era — indeed no sett was ever designed for the name at all. Two further cautions are worth stating plainly. Banff and Buchan is a district tartan, designed in 1992 for the District of Banff and Buchan and based on the Ogilvy sett; its widely retailed ancient colourway is often mistaken for the family tartan, and it is not one. And Buchanan is a different family entirely, with its own setts — one of 1842 taken from the Vestiarium Scoticum of the Sobieski Stuarts, a proven forgery, and one of 1850 from Wilsons of Bannockburn.
Clan facts
| Chief | Charles Buchan of Auchmacoy, Chief of the Name of Buchan, Baron of Auchmacoy |
|---|---|
| Motto | Non inferiora secutus — “not having followed inferior things”. Some sources print the variant Non inferior secutus |
| Plant badge | Not recorded. Retailers often give the sunflower, but every source we checked describes the sunflower as the heraldic crest, not a plant badge |
| Lands | Auchmacoy House, near Ellon, Aberdeenshire, still the chief’s seat |
