Clan MacIver

History

MacIver comes from the Gaelic personal name Iver, and the people who bear it were never a single tidy family. Electric Scotland says the family first held Lergachonzie and Asknish, along with some further land in Cowal, in Argyll. It also records families of the name in Caithness, Inverness-shire and Lewis.

The early story is tradition. One account says the ancestor was Iver, a son of Duncan of Lochow, in the time of Malcolm IV. Another says Iver Crom took Cowal for Alexander II in the thirteenth century. Principal Campbell, writing around 1870, argued for a Glenlyon origin. These accounts disagree, and we cannot check any of them against records of the time. A Robertson society page offers a different tradition, in which MacIvers fled Glenlyon after a fight in 1476. It presents this as one possible origin for some of the name.

Firmer ground begins in the sixteenth century. Electric Scotland gives a Malcolm MacIver in 1292 and an Iver MacIver of Lergachonzie around 1500. In 1564, Electric Scotland says, the fifth Earl of Argyll resigned the chieftainship in favour of Iver of Lergachonzie and Asknish. Even so, the family stayed closely tied to the Campbells.

That closeness cost them. Electric Scotland says MacIver attended the ninth Earl of Argyll with a hundred men in 1679. In 1685 he joined the Earl's rising and was forfeited when it failed. After the Revolution the tenth Earl restored them to Duncan MacIver, provided that he and his heirs adopted the Campbell surname and coat of arms. Our source gives the date as both 1688 and 1689. From then on the chiefly line is found as Campbell of Asknish, and several other MacIver houses also became Campbells.

In 1853 the Lord Lyon, through his depute, recognised Duncan MacIvor Campbell of Asknish as heir of line of the MacIvors of Asknish. He was told to use both the Campbell and MacIver arms and surname. We have found no later recognition of a chief of the name, and the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs lists none, so we treat the clan as armigerous.

Elsewhere the name carried on by itself. A Lochaber branch, called MacGlasrich, followed Macdonald of Keppoch, and other MacIvers settled in Lewis and Caithness. Electric Scotland also notes that MacIvers in Argyll are linked with Campbell, those in Ross and Lewis with MacKenzie, and those in Perthshire with Robertson. Today the name is kept alive by a clan society and by descendants across the world.