Origin of the Surname Hope - Section 10
10. Hope Family Tartan
Until very recent times the control and Register of Tartans was in the hands of competing private organisations resulting in a very unsatisfactory situation. In 2008 this was taken in hand by the Scottish Government and the Register taken out of private hands. It is now under the wing of the National Records of Scotland and is available on line at http://www.tartanregister.gov.uk. Enter "Hope" in the searchbox and you should get a selection of eleven tartans. Previously the tartan shown below was known as the Hope tartan but as indicated on the above Tartan Register this tartan is in fact the tartan of the Hopetoun branch and is a Corporate tartan. This is the tartan worn by the guides at Hopetoun House. The very distinctive feature of this tartan is the double yellow vertical and horizontal lines.
The caption on the above example is incorrect and the fact is that there is no Hope Family Tartan per se.
Tartan is a Scottish Higland phenomenon and it was only in the nineteenth century, thanks mainly to Queen Victoria herself, that Victorian fashion created the need for all clans to have a tartan resulting in tartan now being a present day icon of Scottish identity and of course now embraced by the Scottish tourist industry. The Scottish Border Clans however embraced this culture with varying degrees of non interest. They were proud of their Reiving heritage and of being Riding Clans. The attire for being in the saddle all day was certainly not a kilt.
There is a distinction between wearing a tartan and wearing a kilt. This nicety is clearly defined in the uniform of the regiment - The Kings Own Scottish Borderers (K.O.S.B.). Here the regiment wear tartan trews (trousers) of the Leslie tartan. The drummers of the pipeband also wear trews but the pipers wear kilts of Stewart tartan - a gracious nod towards the pipes highland heritage.
The Clan Hope Society at http://www.clanhope.org have chosen one of the Hope-Vere tartans namely Hope-Vere/Weir #2 as the society tartan. This can be seen to good effect on the photograph page of the website. The Hope-Vere family are a branch of the Hopetoun family and are descended from Charles Hope (1710-1791) a brother of John Hope, 2nd Earl of Hopetoun. A basic family tree showing the connections between the Craighall, Hopetoun, Hope-Vere and Hope-Johnstone families is below. For a more comprehensive tree there is one on the Edinburgh Hopes page.
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