Clan Mackay
also MacKay, McKay, Mac Aoidh, Clan Mackay
Strathnaver and the Mackay country — the kindred of Cape Wrath.
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Clan Mackay
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Clan Mackay.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
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Stake your name →Motto
Manu forti
— With a strong hand
What does the Mackay name mean?
From Mac Aoidh — son of Aodh ('fire'). The Mackay chiefs of Strathnaver claim descent from Iye Mór Mac Aoidh, who flourished c.1210, and through him from the royal house of Moray. The clan's territory was Strathnaver in north-west Sutherland — the long valley of the river Naver — together with the wider Mackay country between the river Helmsdale and Cape Wrath. The Mackays were the dominant kindred of the Scottish far north for the entire late mediaeval and early modern period.
The history of Clan Mackay
The Mackays held Strathnaver as a near-independent fiefdom from the 13th century, holding their land directly of the Crown rather than through the Earls of Sutherland. The relationship with Sutherland was poisonous through the 16th and 17th centuries, culminating in the forced sale of Strathnaver to the Earl of Sutherland in 1829 — an act of legal coercion that immediately preceded the most brutal phase of the Sutherland Clearances. The Mackay tenants of Strathnaver were among the first cleared, evicted in waves between 1814 and 1820 in what became the foundational atrocity of the Highland Clearances.
Donald Mackay (1591–1649), 1st Lord Reay, raised the Mackay Regiment for service under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the Thirty Years' War — three thousand men of Strathnaver and Sutherland in Scandinavian service. Hugh Mackay of Scourie (1640–1692), the Williamite general, commanded at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. Charles Mackay (1814–1889), the Perth-born poet and journalist, wrote the popular volume Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) — still in print today.
Notable bearers of the Mackay name
- Donald Mackay, 1st Lord Reay (1591–1649) — colonel of the Mackay Regiment, 30 Years War
- Hugh Mackay of Scourie (1640–1692) — Williamite general at Killiecrankie
- Charles Mackay (1814–1889) — poet and journalist (Extraordinary Popular Delusions)