Clan Gayre or Clan Gair purports to be a Highland
Scottish clan.
Origins of the Clan
Robert Gayre of Gayre and Nigg (original name Robert Gair), the father of the present chief, created the clan after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. He is the chief source for most of the information in the Clan's Wikipedia article, which can be found nowhere else; Robert Gayre invented the Clan and its history.
Gayre claimed to be the Chief of "Clan Gayre" and "Clan Gayre and Nigg". In 1947, he wrote a book titled ''Gayre's Booke: Being a History of the Family of Gayre'' in which he presented an ancestry that supposedly established his claim to be the chieftain of the Clan of Gayre; however no clan or sept by that name is mentioned in any record prior to Gayre's use of it in the second quarter of the 20th century.
''World Orders of Knighthood and Merit'' by
Guy Stair Sainty (published by
Burke's Peerage
Burke's Peerage Limited is a British genealogical publisher founded in 1826, when the Irish genealogist John Burke began releasing books devoted to the ancestry and heraldry of the peerage, baronetage, knightage and landed gentry of Great Br ...
) refers to "the late Robert Gayre (first Chief of the newly formed Clan Gayre)".
The
Glasgow Herald
''The Herald'' is a Scottish broadsheet newspaper founded in 1783. ''The Herald'' is the longest running national newspaper in the world and is the eighth oldest daily paper in the world. The title was simplified from ''The Glasgow Herald'' in ...
newspaper, on 14 June 1975, wrote, "Robert Gayre, of Gayre and Nigg, is singular among genealogists, dynasts and the like, if only for the reason that, alone among them, he has been able to create a Scottish clan from scratch, providing it with traditions, rituals, precedences and privileges...".
In 2017 the genealogist
Anthony J. Camp
Anthony John Camp (born November 1937) is a British genealogist and former director of the Society of Genealogists.
Early life and education
Camp was born at Walkern, near Stevenage, Hertfordshire. His father was an agricultural carpenter and ...
showed that Gayre did not himself have a male-line descent from earlier families of that surname.
[Anthony Camp, 'George Gair (or Sutherland) alias Robert Gayre or Gayre and Nigg' in ''Genealogists' Magazine'', vol. 32, Number 8 (December 2017) 324-328.]
Clan Chief
The current self-styled chief of the Clan Gayre is Reinold Gayre of Gayre and Nigg.
References
{{reflist
External links
http://www.electricscotland.com/webclans/dtog/gair2.htmlhttps://web.archive.org/web/20070312024217/http://www.myclan.com/clans/Gayre_209/clans, Gayre