Stevenson Tartan

The Stevenson family

Stevenson is a patronymic — son of Stephen or Steven, from the Greek stephanos, a crown — and that single fact governs everything else on this page. The name was formed independently wherever the forename Stephen was common, in Scotland and in England alike, and in England also as a place name from Stevenstone in Devon. There is no single Stevenson descent, no common ancestor and no kin group: two Stevensons share nothing but a grandfather’s first name. This is the honest starting point, and it is why much of what follows is left blank rather than filled in.

The dated records are modest. Stevene Stevenson appears on the Ragman Roll of 1296; John Steywynson is recorded in Banff in 1388; a John Stevin is noted in Aberdeen and an Alexander Stevyn in Glasgow in the early sixteenth century. Beyond that the commonly circulated account — that the family settled in Northumberland before 1066, held land near Newcastle, and that a branch moved north to Newlands near Peebles in 1150 — is repeated without any cited source and should be read as tradition, not record. The same applies to claimed kinship with Clan MacTavish in Argyll. Stevenston in Ayrshire is a parish name, and we found no source establishing any link between the place and the surname in either direction.

There is no Clan Stevenson. No chief of the name is recognised by the Lord Lyon, the name does not appear on the current list of chiefs and commanders, and it is not listed among the armigerous clans either; we found no record of any Stevenson having matriculated undifferenced arms as Chief of the Name, and no clan society of any standing. Stevenson and Stephenson do appear among the associated names of Clan MacTavish, but that is the clan’s own list rather than a determination of the Lord Lyon, and the derivation is shaky: MacTavish is from MacTàmhais, Thomas, which has nothing to do with Stephen. Stevensons who accept that association wear MacTavish tartan, which is a choice rather than a documented entitlement.

The Stevenson tartan

The Stevenson sett is recent and its record is short. Its earliest known date is 1980, no designer is named, and its provenance is recorded only as a Scottish Tartans Society recording, picked up under that society’s register of publicly known tartans. The three threadcounts in circulation, of 80, 192 and 320 threads, are proportional rescalings of the same sett rather than three designs; the original 1980 count was simply increased proportionately. A note in the record that a Charles Stevenson of Glasgow emigrated to America in 1861 is a provenance annotation and is not evidence that the tartan existed in 1861.

A second sett, Stevenson Hunting or Stephenson Hunting, is a genuinely distinct design of 460 threads. Its provenance is disputed and the two accounts cannot be reconciled: one states it was woven by G. W. Stephenson in 1981 as a tribute to his own surname, and notes that it is not officially sanctioned by any chief or head of family; the other describes it as a hunting variant based on an unnamed sett in the records of Bolingbroke and Jones of Norwich, from before 1870. We give both and choose neither.

A note on honesty: Stevenson Modern, Ancient, Weathered, Muted and Reproduction are colourways of the one 1980 sett, not five tartans. No Stevenson sett predates the commercial era by any margin at all — nothing is recorded before 1980, the name appears nowhere in the Vestiarium Scoticum, and there is no Wilsons of Bannockburn attribution, so any claim of a Stevenson tartan worn in earlier centuries is unsupported.

Clan facts

References

1. Stevenson Family — CLAN
2. Stephenson Hunting — Tartan Dictionary
3. Stevenson Hunting — CLAN
4. Clan MacTavish — Wikipedia