“About the only exception to this is the Scottish clan system — descendants who can trace to the clan territory are entitled to use the crest of the clan coat of arms only, encircled with a strap and buckle to show that they are clansmen, not direct lineal descendants. But that is unique to the clan system.”
Septs included in this practice? (Like Sterrett, a sept of Clan Douglas)
also spelled Sterritt, Starratt, Starrat, Sterret, and several others.
From village in Ayreshire called Stair, thence to County Derry, thence New England, thence Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Minnesota, California.
My mother’s maiden name—truly Scottish origin.
Really the whole modern sept thing is a result of the Great Tartan Nonsense (as author Clifford Hanley calls it) that began with George IV's state visit to Edinburgh in the 1820s, and continued under Queen Victoria and her friendship with the goofy Sobieski Stuarts. The canny Scots woolen manufacturers were happy to ride on the wave and find a clan name and tartan for EVERYBODY. Many Lowland and Border families suddenly became "clans" and even more surnames were gathered under clan names as "septs" so that you could buy your very own sett of MacWhoever tartan.
But before the Great Tartan Nonsense, the great Border families would have laughed themselves silly if anybody called them a "clan". Highlanders were considered to be dirty, unlettered savages who spoke a weird unwritten language and stole everybody blind. If you read the 16th c. Scots poets (a quick cheat is to read C.S. Lewis's masterful volume of the Oxford History of English Literature), the Highlander was the butt of the Polack jokes of the time, except he was thieving and murderous as well as ignorant and dirty. As one Lowlander remarked to somebody who asked if his family had a tartan, "No. Thank God my family could always afford to wear trousers!"
Ayrshire is very definitely Lowlands - home of Robert Burns, who never wore tartan in his life probably and certainly never a kilt. They were respectable trousered farmers who spoke broad Scots, not Gaelic. And there is no chief of Clan Douglas, because the title is extinct and was granted to the Hamiltons, who cannot use it because their surname isn't Douglas!
BUT - my advice is, if you like the Douglas crest (it's a pretty one - a salamander in flames, with the motto "Jamais arriere" - "never behind") or the Douglas tartan, and there are several attractive ones to choose from, have at it! It does no harm, everybody has a good time, and there's no real objection to it. Especially since there IS no chief of Clan Douglas, so you're not stealing anybody's crest!
We do it too -- my husband's father's mother has a Scottish surname and her family really is from Scotland, but the tartan is ugly as homemade sin and my husband is a very large man, so although his mother is Irish her surname is listed as a sept of the Gordons, so my husband wears hunting Gordon tartan for day wear and Dress Gordon for evening wear -- which is a douce respectable dark green and blue that is a little less shocking than 6'6" of the hideous orange-and-slime-green Dunbar sett would be.
And I just don't like the MacGregor tartan, too gaudy, so I wear MacKay, which sounds like a family name although we're actually no relation.