Clan Rising

Scottish Clan Finder

Enter your surname and match it against the documented clans of Scotland — Highland and Lowland, from the sea-kings of the Isles to the Border names.

Name

Free, instant, no account — every result is a documented family record.

Every Scottish record in the atlas carries the clan's territory drawn on the map — the core lands and the wider historical reach — alongside the meaning of the name, the motto, the chief's seat, famous bearers and the clan's stories. The finder matches your spelling and its variants: Mc and Mac, dropped prefixes, emigration-era respellings.

Scotland's names come in more than one shape. Some are formal clans with recognised chiefs; some are septs that followed a greater house; some are Lowland, Border or burgh families that never used the word clan at all. The finder returns the documented record for the name itself, whatever shape the history took.

The Scottish shelf currently documents 71 names, and it grows continuously.

Or start with a name

Frequently asked

How do I find my Scottish clan by surname?

Type the surname into the finder. It matches against the documented Scottish records in the atlas — clans, septs and family names — including spelling variants, and returns the full record: territory map, meaning, motto, chief and stories.

Is Mc different from Mac?

No — Mc is simply an abbreviation of Mac, Gaelic for 'son of'. McDonald and MacDonald are the same name and resolve to the same clan record; the variant spellings are listed on the record itself.

Does every Scottish surname belong to a clan?

Not in the formal sense. Some names are clans with chiefs recognised by the Court of the Lord Lyon, some are septs that followed a larger clan, and many Lowland and Border names were families rather than clans. Each name in the atlas gets its own documented record either way.

My family left Scotland generations ago. Is the clan still mine?

The name is the line. If your surname descends from a Scottish family by ancestral migration, the documented record of that name — its territory, motto and stories — is the record of your line's origin, however many generations sit between you and the sailing.