Clan MacAlpine
MacAlpine is a straightforward Gaelic patronymic, Mac Ailpein, “son of Ailpean”. Because Ailpean was an ordinary personal name, the surname arose independently in several places and carries no implication of common descent. That is the first thing to say plainly, because the second is that the descent from Cináed mac Ailpín, king of the Picts and Scots, who died in 858, is tradition and not record. There is no documented genealogical line from him to any MacAlpine family. The sources that repeat it hedge it: one says the clan is “believed to be” of royal descent, another that “if there was a MacAlpine inheritance, it is through the Royal line of Scotland”. We could not confirm any specific earliest dated bearer of the name from a reliable source, and the figure of 1260 that circulates rests on a commercial surname website rather than a record.
The territorial claims are no firmer. The lands around Dunstaffnage in Argyll are given as traditional, hedged with “apparently” and “traditionally” in the references, and Dunstaffnage is historically a MacDougall and then a Campbell castle. The Gazetteer for Scotland records that the chiefship was traditionally elective rather than hereditary, and that by the fourteenth century the MacAlpines had no chief and no property. There is no forfeiture or attainder to relate, because there was no estate on record to lose. MacAlpine is counted among the traditional Siol Alpin grouping with Grant, MacGregor, MacKinnon, MacNab, MacQuarrie, MacAulay and MacFie — itself a traditional association rather than documented kinship.
The MacAlpine tartan
The Scottish Register of Tartans returns two results for MacAlpine: MacAlpine (reference 2274) and MacAlpine (1906) (reference 2275), the latter also carrying the references STA 1914 and STWR 1914. The register gives no designer and no date recorded for either. They are the same design: the second substitutes black for the dark blue of the first, which makes it a recording variant rather than a separate tartan. The pattern is a dark green and black hunting-style ground with white and yellow lines. The 1906 sett date and the 1914 reference numbers point to an early twentieth-century commercial recording, most likely in one of the Edwardian clan-tartan compendia, though we could not confirm which. MacAlpine does not appear in the Vestiarium Scoticum.
A note on honesty: there is one distinct MacAlpine threadcount. The two register entries are recordings of a single design, and anything sold as MacAlpine Modern, Ancient, Weathered or Muted is a colourway of it. No MacAlpine sett predates the commercial era — the evidence dates this one to about 1906, and there is nothing to connect it to the ninth century or to any century before the nineteenth. One further point that matters commercially: the Clan MacAlpine Society states that the two MacAlpine crests in circulation are regarded as fictitious by the Court of the Lord Lyon, because no MacAlpine chiefly arms have ever been recorded in the Lyon Register, and advises against their use. A “MacAlpine clan crest badge” is therefore an invented device, whoever is selling it.
Clan facts
| Chief | There is no chief. Michael Todd McAlpin Sr. was commissioned Commander of MacAlpine by Dr Joseph Morrow, Lord Lyon, on 19 April 2017, for ten years or until a chief is named. A Commander is not a Chief, and no MacAlpine chiefly arms are in the Lyon Register |
|---|---|
| Motto | Not recorded. The Gazetteer for Scotland states the clan has no official motto or crest. What circulates is a slogan or war-cry, Cuimhnich bàs Ailpein — Gaelic, “remember the death of Alpin” |
| Plant badge | Pine, per the Clan MacAlpine Society; the Gazetteer for Scotland records none. The two sources conflict |
| Lands | Not recorded. Dunstaffnage in Argyll is traditional only, and the clan held no property from the fourteenth century |