Talk:Clan Campbell of Cawdor

Chief ?

Does anyone know why the current Earl Cawdor is not the recognised chief of Clan Campbell of Cawdor ? It is his line which were the historic chiefs.QuintusPetillius (talk) 17:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Calder vs Caddell

I'm not sure why whoever keeps changing the article to reference Caddell insists on doing so Caddell is only very loosely related to either Cawdor or Calder. All the sources suggest that Calder was the original spelling and the name was only changed to Cawdor because of a typo by Shakespeare and a later clan chief of Campbell of Calder officially changed the spelling to better match Shakespeare. Rather than Calder being a "lowland variant" I propose it was the original word as it predates both Gaelic and Scots by some margin, being of older P-Celtic origins meaning "hard" or "rocky" and "river" and to be commonly found in what was traditionally P-Celtic speaking regions like Scotland and England before new languages like Gaelic and Scots/English replaced them. Assuming I'm right that would explain why so many rivers are called Calder and why they're located where they are, and if for example you search for images of the River Calder in the Highlands near Cawdor you can see how hard and rocky they look. That said I'd also point out that I actually live in Scotland in the North-East and have never met nor heard of anyone with Caddell as a surname while Calder is prevalent (checked about sixty year's worth of class names from my old school for example). Caddell presumably has it's origins in Wales as the Welsh language diverged and evolved from Brittonic and as in Scotland it's most concentrated south of the Central Belt squarely in the Lowlands rather than in the Highlands and Noorth-East it's either imported from elsewhere in Britain outwith Scotland or Caddell rather than Calder is the newer Lowland variant. It's even possible that Calder as a surname or place name was transplanted into France by P-Celtic speaking refugee Britons and gradually evolved into Kaledour. Or rather more simply the Norman knight who was gifted the titles and estates of Cawdor Castle adopted the original term Calder and spelt it phonetically. Hugh of Calder subsequently becoing Hugh de Kaledour. In any case I'd rather we discussed the matter and our sources at length here rather than indulge in editing wars. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.130.166 (talk) 22:53, 17 March 2015 (UTC)