Colquhoun Is Scottish, Not Irish

I’m just watching Kate Winslet’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, and one of her ancestors was a Colquhoun. The programme said that the name is Irish, but it’s actually Scottish (from Gaelic, hence the possible confusion).

The name is from the west side of Loch Lomond. The clan were pro-government, and were massacred by the MacGregors at one point. So a British soldier would have been a natural career choice. The clan seat is Rossdhu House near Luss, now a wellknown golf course.

My grandparents were tenants of Sir Ivar Colquhoun and my mum was offered to get married from Rossdhu House, although she didn’t take up the offer. Moray Hamilton, by email

EDITOR REPLIES: Thanks Moray. We passed on your comments to the series’ producers, who replied: We were aware of the ancient Scottish origins of the Colquhoun surname. However, Kate’s ancestor William’s father came from Ireland, and we believe that his branch of the family were in Ireland for a number of generations.

Ideally, the genealogist in the programme would have said to Kate something like “his parents came from Ireland” rather than what she did say, which we can see is misleading. It’s one of

the frustrations of non-scripted programme-making that we can’t always capture precisely what we’d like!

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to chart Kate’s branch of Colquhouns further back – so while she should be connected to the Scottish clan, it’s not something we could prove in the way we need for the series. We will pass along your information about the clan to the director of the episode, who may be in touch with Kate and her family. We’re sure they would be very interested to hear it, and would want to know of the Scottish connection.