Clan MacKinnon
Crest & Motto
The MacKinnon crest shows a boar’s head, and the motto is Audentes Fortuna Juvat: fortune favours the bold. In the full heraldic version the boar’s head holds a deer’s shank bone in its mouth, from the legend of a chief who killed a boar while trapped in a cave.
History
Clan MacKinnon, in Gaelic MacFhionghain, son of the fair born, is counted among the Siol Ailpein, the clans claiming descent from the kin of Kenneth MacAlpin, the 9th century king credited with uniting Picts and Scots. The clan’s historic lands lay in the Inner Hebrides: Mishnish at the northern tip of Mull, and above all Strathaird in Skye, between the Cuillin and Broadford, with the castles of Dun Ringill and later Caisteal Maol by the narrows at Kyleakin. The clan also had a notable churchly line, serving as abbots of Iona.
The MacKinnons held Strathaird under the Lords of the Isles and shared in the upheavals that followed the Lordship’s forfeiture in 1493. They fought as royalists under Montrose in the 1640s and came out in both the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings.
After Culloden the elderly chief, Iain Dubh MacKinnon, sheltered Bonnie Prince Charlie in Skye and helped ferry him to the mainland, for which he was imprisoned. Clan tradition says the prince rewarded the MacKinnons with the recipe of his personal liqueur, the origin legend of Drambuie. Debt rather than forfeiture finished the old order, and the last of the clan lands were sold by 1791. MacKinnons scattered widely in the Clearance era, to the Carolinas, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and the chiefship passed in 1811 to a cadet line from which the present chief descends.
Clan Chief
The current chief is Madam Anne Gunhild MacKinnon of MacKinnon, 38th Chief of the Name and Arms of MacKinnon, chief since 1980 and the first female MacKinnon chief.
Clan Tartan
Septs and Family Names
Family names associated with Clan MacKinnon include: .
Unsure how clan names, crests and septs work? Our guide to Scottish clan names explains the rules.
Further reading
The MacKinnon Crest as a 3D Model
You can download the MacKinnon crest as a 3D model file (£10 to £25) and print it on any 3D printer, or carve it in wood on a CNC machine.
See the MacKinnon lands on Skye and Mull on our interactive clan map of Scotland.
