Clan Cameron from Celtic Studio

Cameron

Although the Camerons are reputed to be one of the most ancient of Highland clans, the clan historian Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk has traced their name and origins back to the kingdom of Fife, and suggested that they stem from the royal line of Mac Duff. Certainly theirs is a Fife place-name, Cam brun, Gaelic for Crooked Hill. Although now it is more naturally rendered Cam shron, which means Crooked Nose or Headland, Moncreiffe has noted the persistence of the letter B when the name appears in mediaeval documents. He has also pointed out the similarity between the heraldry of the Camerons and the Earls of Fife. A charter in favour of a brother of the Earl of Fife was witnessed by Adam of Kamerum in the 13th century, and in the same era Robert of Cambrun was granted the lands of Ballegarno by William the Lion.
It was not until 1296 that Sir Robert Cambron appeared in the office of Sheriff of Atholl in the neighbourhood of Lochaber. It was probably he who owned Ballegarno Castle when Edward I of England occupied it in that year. In 1320 Sir John of Cambrun was among the signatories of the Declaration of Arbroath. By 1388 Ballegarno and its properties had passed with heiresses to other families, and before the century ended the Camerons had become established in Lochaber.
Here, on the east side of the loch and river Lochy, lived the Mac Gillonies, of whom the Mac Martins of Letterfinlay were a sept. Donald, reckoned the 11th Cameron Chief, married an heiress of Letterfinlay and left two sons: Allan, Constable of Strone Castle and succeeding Chief, and Ewen, progenitor of the Camerons of Strone. Strone is once again the Gaelic name Sron, a Headland. Ewen the 13th Chief adopted the title of Lochiel when his estates were erected into a barony of that name in 1528.
It has given its name to one of the three Cameron tartans worn today, the second being that of Erracht. The general Cameron tartan was not widely adopted until the late 19th century.
The name of Cameron itself has been bestowed, through the fanaticism of one man, on an object that may appear somewhat surprising, considering that it is generally a Highland and a Catholic name. But a certain Richard Cameron, son of a small shop-keeper in Fife, was converted by the extreme Calvinists while he was a schoolmaster and an Episcopalian. This was at a time when the Covenanters had lost political power in Scotland, and were being treated with a comparatively mild form of the intolerance with which they had bludgeoned the country in the days of their supremacy. Cameron joined the exiled Calvinist ministers in Holland, but returned in 1680 to indulge in field-preaching. In July he was surprised by a body of followers to fight it out. Richard Cameron himself was among the slain, and so did not live to see the Calvinist triumph of 1688. But the regiment which was raised then in support of William of Orange was named the Cameronian regiment in his memory.