Edinburgh's fashionable dance bands of the 1780s were led by a MacGlashan, and the city called him King.
Alexander McGlashan, born around 1740, dressed showily enough and carried himself grandly enough to earn the nickname, and backed it with the work. He played St Cecilia's Hall, edited three important early collections of Scottish dance music, and taught the violin to Nathaniel Gow.
Behind that Edinburgh figure sits an older word, and a quieter Perthshire name.
Who Was "King" McGlashan?
The leader of the smartest band in Edinburgh at the moment Scottish fiddle music was first being written down. His collections came out in quick succession: A Collection of Strathspey Reels in 1780, A Collection of Scots Measures in 1781, and A Collection of Reels in 1786.
He died in Edinburgh in May 1797 and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. His pupil Nathaniel was the son of Niel Gow, the Perthshire fiddler whose family our history of Clan Gow follows, placing McGlashan inside the tradition that produced the strathspey.
What Does MacGlashan Mean?
Son of the grey or green one. The Oxford-backed Dictionary of American Family Names treats MacGlashan as a variant of McGlasson, from Gaelic Mac Glasáin or Mac Glaisín, a patronymic built on the personal name Glasán or Glaisín, itself a diminutive of the color term glas.
That word does not translate cleanly. Glas covers grey, and it covers the blue-green of growing things and cold water, which is why place-names built on it sit oddly in English. The diminutive turns a color into a person: little grey one, or the greyish lad.
How Does MacGlashan Relate to Glass?
They share a root and nothing else documented. Both grow from glas, and a clerk shortening MacGlashan to Glass is plausible, but plausible is not recorded.
The difference shows up in clan lists. MacGlashan appears on the published sept lists; Glass does not appear on the Mackintosh or Gunn lists at all, a point our history of the Glass surname works through in detail. If your family carries Glass, the Mackintosh route runs through MacGlashan rather than direct, and it needs a document to complete it.
Is MacGlashan a Sept of Clan Mackintosh?
Yes, and this one holds up. The sept list for Clan Mackintosh carries Macglashan alongside Adamson, Clark, Crerar, Elder, MacAndrew, MacRitchie, Noble, Tosh and Toshach, and Electric Scotland's separate compilation files the name under Mackintosh as well. Two independent lists agreeing is about as firm as sept evidence gets.
That connection carries the name into Clan Chattan, the confederation the Mackintosh chiefs led from Angus Mackintosh's marriage to Eva in 1291.
What About the Stewart Connection?
It is real, but it is the wrong Stewarts. You will sometimes see MacGlashan attached to Clan Stewart of Appin. The Appin sept list does not carry it: the names attached to that Argyll branch are MacColl, MacLeay and Livingstone, Carmichael, Combich, MacRobb, MacInnes and MacLaurin, as our account of Clan Stewart sets out.
Electric Scotland files Macglashan under the Stewarts of Atholl instead, which makes far better sense geographically. Atholl is northern Perthshire, on the approach to Mackintosh and Chattan country. A name claimed by both Atholl Stewarts and Mackintoshes lived where the two spheres touched, in the country described in our survey of the clans of Perthshire.
Is MacGlashan Also an Irish Name?
In Donegal, yes, and there it often stopped being MacGlashan altogether. The same dictionary entry records the name in Ireland as well as Scotland and notes that in many cases it was translated into English as Green, on the strength of glas.
Translation rather than transcription is a particular trap, because it leaves no phonetic trail at all. A family appearing as MacGlashan in one generation and Green in the next has not misspelled anything; someone rendered the meaning instead of the sound. Our history of the Green surname covers the roads into that spelling.
How Common Is the Name?
Uncommon, and rarer still in its full form. The 1901 census of Scotland counted 753 under the MacGlashan heading, ranking the name 876th, a figure folding every Mc and M' spelling into the Mac form. FamilySearch's Family Tree holds 244 in Scotland, 43 in the United States and 16 in Canada.
America favors the short prefix heavily: the 2020 census recorded 473 people spelled McGlashan, ranked 48,236th, with no separate entry for the longer form. If your line is American and spells it Mc, that is the majority experience.
How Do You Research a MacGlashan Line?
- Search MacGlashan, McGlashan, MacGlasson, McGlasson, Glashan and MacGlashen together. The -shan and -sson endings are the same name.
- Run Glass and Green as separate hypotheses, not merged results. Either may be the same family; neither can be assumed.
- Concentrate on Perthshire first, then the Inverness-shire and Badenoch parishes of Clan Chattan, using our guide to searching ScotlandsPeople.
- Work down from the statutory registers of 1855 before attempting the older parish books; our note on civil registration explains what each certificate gives you.
- Treat any sept chart as a starting point for a document search, not a conclusion.
Own a Piece of MacGlashan Heritage
A color word, a Perthshire hillside and a fiddler who ruled Edinburgh: the name holds more than its size suggests. The MacGlashan range covers three pieces, a mug, a garden flag and a framed keepsake ornament, each carrying the family crest above a tartan background. MacGlashan has no sett of its own on record, so the weave here is a heritage design rather than a historic allocation, and our guide to who may wear which tartan explains why that is worth saying out loud.
MacGlashan Clan Crest Ornament in a Silver Frame
Frequently Asked Questions About the MacGlashan Name
What does MacGlashan mean?
Son of Glasán or Glaisín, a personal name formed as a diminutive of Gaelic glas, grey or blue-green.
Is MacGlashan a sept of Clan Mackintosh?
Yes. The name appears on the Mackintosh sept list and on Electric Scotland's separate compilation, which brings it into Clan Chattan.
Are MacGlashan and Glass the same surname?
They share the root glas, and a shortening is plausible, but no record proves it. Research them separately until a document connects them.
Is MacGlashan connected to the Stewarts of Appin?
Not on the Appin sept list. The recorded Stewart association is with the Stewarts of Atholl in Perthshire.
Sources and Further Reading
- FamilySearch: McGlasson — the Oxford entry on Mac Glasáin, Mac Glaisín and glas.
- FamilySearch: MacGlashan — the Donegal note and the Green translation.
- Clan Mackintosh — the sept list carrying Macglashan.
- Clan Stewart of Appin — the Appin sept list, which does not include MacGlashan.
- Electric Scotland: clan sept names — Macglashan under Mackintosh and under Stewart of Atholl.
- Alexander "King" McGlashan — the three collections and Nathaniel Gow.
- MacGlashan in the 1901 Scottish census — 753 bearers, ranked 876th.
- McGlashan in the 2020 US census — 473 bearers, ranked 48,236th.
- George F. Black, The Surnames of Scotland — the reference of record for early Gaelic spellings.
Grey, green, and still going: the MacGlashan pieces are here, with over 2,000 more surnames behind the site search.