About Tartan Dictionary

· updated June 15, 2026   1 min 40 s  

I'm Humphrey Drummond, and trying to work out the Drummond of Megginch tartan is what drew me into tartan and its evolution. Untangling our family's tartan from the very similar Wilson "New Grant" it had long been confused with turned into a way of thinking about all tartan — by its pattern rather than its name or its exact thread count. That idea is the heart of this site (see the home page).

The aim is to support the Scottish Celtic tartan tradition: to help people understand tartans, trace family and clan traditions, feel welcome whatever brings them here, and — as a public good — find the weavers and makers who can make their own. There is doubt about this but seeing the historical record from China 3.000 years ago, contemporary with Austria, to Roman Britain on the front line at Vindolanda, the weaving in the Isles to the current day. I am convinced that wearing of tartan with modern twists is a long standing tradition.

This is not a register of particular tartans but it does allow you to see all tartans and visualise them. The TotalTartandDiction (TTD) viewer allows you to navigate the whole space of tarans and show you every possible one. I am interested in collating all the known information into the record.

This is my attempt to make sense of it all. It is an early, alpha site: things will change, and some of it (colour conversions, dating, attributions) is still uncertain — openly so.

Thanks

To my niece Pelagie and Amaury, whose engagement set this going; and to Bertie Drummond-Herdman and Lexa Drummond for sorting out the colours and patterns of the Drummond of Megginch tartan, and for the trips to the weavers in Selkirk.

The look of the site is carried by its own TartanDictionary theme, which is adapted from simpleness by Rainer Chiang — the clean, readable Hugo theme that inspired it. With thanks to Rainer, and to Niklas Buschmann's contrast before it.

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