Clan MacKinlay
MacKinlay is a patronymic, not a territorial name: the Gaelic is Mac Fhionnlaigh, son of Finlay, and the same original lies behind Findlay, Finlayson, MacInally and MacKinley. That matters, because a patronymic can arise wherever a man called Finlay had sons, and there is accordingly no single kindred of origin to trace. We could not establish an earliest sourced date for the name at all. The Clan Buchanan Society’s own MacKinlay page claims descent from a Finlay, cadet of Buchanan of Drumikill, believed to be the third son of Robert, second laird — but gives no date and no primary record, and “believed to be” is the society’s own hedge. The earliest dated item it cites is a gravestone near Callander recording James McKinlay, tacksman at Inverchagernie, who died on 4 February 1805 aged 65.
No MacKinlay lands, castle or designation are recorded anywhere we could check. Drumikill is a Buchanan seat, not a MacKinlay one. The only locality with any attachment is the Callander district, where a graveyard once attached to a chapel of St Bride is given as the traditional burial place of the McKinlays of Annie, a nearby farm. The name is claimed as a sept by three separate clans that all have recognised chiefs — Buchanan, Farquharson, and Stewart of Appin — which is itself a sign that the connection is a nineteenth or twentieth-century attribution rather than a recorded descent. Clan Buchanan’s own page on septs is admirably frank about this: it notes that sept lists generally date from a period when clan societies and tartan makers linked as many surnames as possible to clans, whether or not there was a historical connection.
The MacKinlay tartan
The MacKinlay sett is documented, and it is not old. The pattern first appears under the name MacKinlay in Whyte’s The Tartans of the Clans and Septs of Scotland, published by W. & A. K. Johnston in 1906. The sett itself is not original to that book: it is the same pattern Logan had already published as Murray of Atholl. In other words, an existing tartan was given a new name in 1906.
A MacKinlay Dress sett is separately recorded, with an earliest date of 2002 and no designer or source stated, and a second, shorter MacKinlay count also carries a date around 2002 — whether that is a separate registration or a reduced transcription of the 1906 pattern we could not determine, and we would rather say so. The recorded variant listed as MacKinlay with two-and-four black stripes is a transcription variant of the main sett, not a separate tartan.
A note on honesty: there is no MacKinlay tartan before 1906, and the one that exists was published as Murray of Atholl first. Notes derived from the Scottish Tartans Society state plainly that there is no mention of a MacKinlay tartan in Wilsons of Bannockburn’s comprehensive pattern books, and the name does not appear in the Vestiarium Scoticum. MacKinlay Modern, Ancient, Weathered and Muted are colourways of the one 1906 sett. Any claim of a MacKinlay tartan worn since the fourteenth century is false.
Clan facts
| Chief | No chief. We found no Lord Lyon recognition, no recorded date of dormancy, no commander and no MacKinlay clan society. Strictly, even the label “armigerous” overstates matters, since that term means a name-group that once had a chief bearing undifferenced arms and we found no evidence MacKinlay ever had one. Those who wear it as a sept do so under the chief of Buchanan, Farquharson or Stewart of Appin, depending on which list they follow. |
|---|---|
| Motto | Not recorded. No motto is attributed to MacKinlay by the Lord Lyon, by the standard clan lists or by any clan society. Crest-and-motto badges sold under the name are unsourced. |
| Plant badge | Not recorded. Worn as a Buchanan sept, the badge would be Buchanan’s bilberry and oak. |
| Lands | Not recorded. Only a district association with Callander and the Lennox. Clan Buchanan’s present seat is Cambusmore, near Callander. |