Most of the followers of the clan were tenants, who supplied labour to the clan leaders. Contrary to popular belief, the ordinary clansmen rarely had any blood tie of kinship with the clan chiefs, but they sometimes took the chief's surname as their own when surnames came into common use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 1.3 Clans, the law and the legal processĬlan organisation Clan membership Īs noted above, the word clan is derived from the Gaelic word clann.1.2 Authority of the clans (the dùthchas and the oighreachd).Thus, by the eighteenth century the myth had arisen that the whole clan was descended from one ancestor, perhaps relying on Scottish Gaelic clann originally having a primary sense of 'children' or 'offspring'. However, the need for proved descent from a common ancestor related to the chiefly house is too restrictive.
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