The Youngs in Scotland

Young is a Border and Lowland surname, descriptive rather than territorial — it originally distinguished the younger of two men sharing a forename — so there is no single point of origin. The earliest documented bearers are Malmor and Ade Young at Dumbarton in 1271; others include Roger Yung, released from the Tower of Berwick on 10 October 1335, and John Young of Dingwall, witness to a charter of the Earl of Ross in 1342. The name concentrates in Roxburghshire, Angus and Kincardineshire. The Border Youngs were a riding family, and Rue Castle near Jedburgh was burned by English forces in 1513 and again in 1545.

The principal recorded line descends from Sir Peter Young of Seton, 1544 to 1628, second son of a Dundee burgess, who was tutor and later almoner to James VI and was knighted at Whitehall in 1605. His arms were matriculated as the paternal, undifferenced arms of the name Young, and that crest is the one Youngs use internationally today. His great-grandson acquired Auldbar Castle in Angus in 1670, and the line ended without issue in the mid-eighteenth century. Later Youngs include the chemist James Young, known as “Paraffin Young”.

To be straight about status: Young is an armigerous family with no chief. The chiefly line of Young of Auldbar failed in the mid-eighteenth century and no successor has since been recognised by the Lord Lyon. Youngs of Scotland is a charitable and educational society operating under the Lord Lyon’s 1987 permission to display the arms of Peter Young of Auldbar; it is not a chiefly house. Young is also widely listed as a sept of Clan Douglas, but that is a conventional association rather than a Lyon Court ruling.

The Young tartan

This is one of the clearest provenances of any family tartan, and it is recent. There is exactly one Young family sett in the Scottish Register of Tartans, and it was designed in 1992 by Derek Young of Benderloch, near Oban, accredited by the Scottish Tartans Society on 1 January 1992. It takes the Douglas sett as its structure and overlays a purple, yellow and orange box check drawn from the Christina Young arisaid plaid of 1726, set on west-coast greens and blues.

The Christina Young plaid is the genuinely old textile in this story, and it is not a clan tartan: a homespun, hand-loomed arisaid with the date and her initials stitched into the edge, bought by the Scottish Tartans Society in 1966 and described as one of the most completely preserved specimens of Scottish homespun hand-looming.

A note on honesty: the Young tartan is not from the Vestiarium Scoticum, not from Wilsons of Bannockburn, and not a nineteenth-century weaver’s pattern. Young Weathered is a colour change only — Derek Young altered the base colours to avoid confusion with Douglas without changing the threadcount — and Young Ancient and Reproduction are likewise colourways. There is no registered Young Hunting or Young Dress sett. Several corporate tartans contain the word Young; none of them is a family tartan.

Family facts

No plant badge is recorded for the Young family in the sources we checked, so none is listed above.

References

1. Young tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Young Tartans — Youngs of Scotland
3. Young Modern — Lochcarron of Scotland