The Campbell Clan

Amongst the countless surnames one can be given, I was born with the name Campbell. The silent P inevitably results in an unsure customer support specialist wanting me to spell my name for them when I call for billing questions or changes of address. Somewhere in the recesses of their brain, memory of the soup logo tells them that there's more to the name than the phonetics would suggest.

The Campbells are an old Scottish clan whose origins disappear into legend before the 1200s. Scottish society was matriarchal until the Middle Ages, and their family history documentation wasn't as diligent as other parts of Europe. Whatever their earlier history may have been, my forefathers adopted a name that probably derives from caimbeul, a Gaelic phrase meaning "crooked mouth." One of my ancestors evidently embraced a somewhat unflattering physical description.

Through a combination of crafty marriages, fortuitous alliances, and probably shady dealings, the Campbells became a powerful clan in Argyll. Argyll is northwest of Glasgow, a hilly stretch of land that runs northeast from the coast. Various castles dot the landscape, the ruins of one being the household of early Campbell Earls of Argyll (more on them later). I showed a picture of the ruins to my unimpressed brother who stated that he's confident he could build a better castle if he wanted to.

Despite this architectural deficiency, the Campbell Clan rose to the upper echelons of power during the Renaissance. The earls of Argyll were at times the de facto rulers of the country. They gained a reputation for political troublemaking both internal an external to the country. Wikipedia dedicates 1300 words to the wars and uprisings we were involved in as the English slowly gained supremacy over their northern neighbors. A college classmate by the name McGregor informed me that our families are still upset with each other after some sheep went missing 500 years ago. Every time I run into someone from Scotland and tell them my name, they can't resist teasing me for our clan's notorious reputation. On the plus side, it is a popular name to have at the Texas Scottish Festival.

While the name Campbell conjures up the image of my forebearers being proud kilt-donning Scotsmen, the truth is far more complex. My research indicates I'm only 10-15% Scottish. I'm mostly English, but the luck of the draw has given me a Highland surname. Throw in adoption, cheating wives, and those wacky Irish MacCampbells that strapped themselves to the Campbell name, and you have to wonder if there's any legitimate Campbell Clan blood running through my veins. Fortunately, DNA analysis can resolve that question.

As part of the Genographic project, I swabbed my cheek for cells and mailed them off to a laboratory. The Y chromosome is handed down from father to father, the only variation being occasional mutation. Our genes have a propensity for stuttering, adding extra sequences of TAGA here and there. A Y chromosome analysis examines specific areas of the code to see how many times "TAGA" is repeated. My TAGA counts were quite similar to other Campbells in the database. This intrigued me, and so I had the lab study additional areas of the chromosome for a total of 67 markers to benchmark against other people.

They can estimate of how many generations ago you had a common ancestor with someone based on the theorized rate of mutation for the different markers and the number of differences between your chromosomes. My closest relative is a 40 year old veterinarian named Vance that lives in Oklahoma. The next closest person to me in the database is the current Earl of Argyll, head of the Campbell clan. The odds are placed at 50% that I share a common ancestor with this man within the last 10 generations and over 80% within the past 15 generations. This means that I can confidently assert that I descend from one of the early Earls; my fathers' fathers' were nobility at some point.

My exact lineage from those Renaissance Earls of Argyll is shrouded in legend. Hearsay has it I am the descendants of a bastard son of Archibald Campbell, the second earl. Being illegitimate was bad enough, but then his father was killed at the Battle of Flodden. Thus the slow descent away from the aristocracy began for my side of the clan. The details of this will be discussed in the next article. Stay tuned...