| Variant spellings | Home, Hume (both pronounced "Hoom") |
| Name origin | From the barony of Home (earlier Hume) in Berwickshire |
| Motto | A Home, A Home, A Home (the clan war cry, used as motto) |
| Core territory | Berwickshire, the Merse, eastern Scottish Borders |
| Clan badge / plant | Broom |
| Historical title | Earls (later Earls and Dukes) of Home |
The Home name derives from the barony of Home — earlier written Hume — in Berwickshire, in the eastern Scottish Borders. The place-name itself is of Old English origin, from hōm, meaning a small island of high ground in low-lying or marshy land — a description that fits the position of Home Castle on its ridge above the flat agricultural land of the Merse. The family took their name from this place when the barony was granted to an ancestor by the Scottish Crown in the early medieval period.
Both spellings — Home and Hume — have been used interchangeably by branches of the family across the centuries. The philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) — one of the most important thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment — was connected to the same family, though a collateral branch. He adopted the spelling "Hume" as being more phonetically transparent to English readers; the family's own pronunciation of both spellings is identical — "Hoom," with a long vowel.
The first Home on record appears in the twelfth century as a witness to charters in Berwickshire. The barony of Home was held by the family from the thirteenth century onward, and by the fourteenth century the Homes were established as one of the most powerful families in the eastern Borders.
The Merse — the fertile plain of eastern Berwickshire between the Lammermuir Hills and the River Tweed — was one of the most agriculturally productive regions of medieval Scotland. It is gentler country than the western Borders, its fields more open, its rivers wider, and its proximity to England more immediate. The English border runs along the Tweed itself for much of its length, and Berwick-upon-Tweed — the town at the river's mouth — changed hands between Scotland and England more times than any other town in Britain.
Home Castle, on its ridge above the Merse, was the principal Home stronghold and the administrative centre of their territorial power. The castle is now largely ruined, but the ridge on which it stands commands extraordinary views across the Merse toward the Cheviot Hills in England and northward toward the Lammermuirs. Its position made it a landmark visible for miles in every direction — a statement of territorial dominance as well as a military installation.
The Homes were created Earls of Home in 1473 — one of the earlier Scottish earldoms — in recognition of their power and service in the eastern Borders. The 1st Earl consolidated the family's position as the leading noble house of Berwickshire and established the pattern of royal service that would characterise the family for the next century.
The Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513 was one of the most consequential events in Home clan history, and one of the most controversial. Alexander Home, 3rd Earl of Home, commanded the Scottish left wing at Flodden and — according to a persistent and damning tradition — withdrew his cavalry from the field after an initial success, declining to return to support the rest of the Scottish army as it was destroyed around James IV. The King was killed; Scotland suffered its worst military defeat in generations; and the Homes faced accusations of cowardice or treachery that were never entirely answered. Whether the accusation is fair depends on contested reconstructions of the battle's timeline, but it attached itself to the Home name and did not let go.
The 3rd Earl was executed in 1516, during the regency that followed Flodden, in circumstances that mixed genuine political charges with the personal enmity of his regent opponents. His descendants rebuilt the family's position, and the Homes continued to play a central role in Scottish politics through the sixteenth century — sometimes aligned with the Protestant reformers, sometimes seeking accommodation with Catholic powers, navigating the dangerous currents of religious and dynastic politics with the pragmatic flexibility that Border survival required.
The Homes' political alignments in the seventeenth century were broadly Royalist, and the family supported Charles II during the Interregnum. The Earldom survived the Restoration and continued into the eighteenth century without the dramatic catastrophe that ended so many Scottish noble lines — the Homes were sufficiently flexible in their political commitments to avoid the full consequences of supporting the losing side in Scotland's recurring civil conflicts.
David Hume (1711–1776), born in Edinburgh and raised at Ninewells in Berwickshire, was a collateral member of the Home family. He is widely regarded as the most important philosopher writing in the English language — his Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), his Enquiries, and his History of England established him as the central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment and one of the foundational thinkers of empiricism and scepticism. His religious scepticism made him controversial in his own time; his intellectual legacy has grown larger with every passing century.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Home (1903–1995), served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1963 to October 1964 — the last British Prime Minister to serve while holding a hereditary peerage, and the only twentieth-century Prime Minister to have played first-class cricket. He renounced his earldom (under the Peerage Act 1963, newly passed) to enter the House of Commons and fight the 1964 general election as leader of the Conservative Party. He lost narrowly to Harold Wilson's Labour Party. He later returned to the Lords as a life peer, Lord Home of the Hirsel — the Hirsel being the family's Berwickshire seat near Coldstream, which he made his home throughout his life.
The Home and Hume surnames have spread across the Scottish and British diaspora, though neither is among the most common Scottish surnames worldwide. The two spellings — Home and Hume — appear in roughly equal measure in North American, Australian, and New Zealand records, with the Hume spelling perhaps slightly more common as it is more phonetically transparent to non-Scots readers.
In Australia, Hamilton Hume (1797–1873), born in New South Wales to Scottish parents, was one of the most significant explorers of the Australian interior. He co-led the 1824–1825 overland expedition from Sydney to Port Phillip Bay, opening up the rich agricultural lands of what is now Victoria. The Hume Highway — the main road connecting Sydney and Melbourne — is named for him, as is Lake Hume on the Murray River.
In Canada, Home families appear in Ontario and the Maritime provinces, principally from direct Scottish emigration in the nineteenth century. The eastern Borders — including Berwickshire — were not as severely affected by the Clearances as the Highlands, so Home emigration was more typically voluntary economic migration than forced displacement.
Research into Home/Hume families requires checking both spellings consistently. The two forms were used interchangeably in parish records across the Borders, and a family might appear as Home in one generation and Hume in another.
Old Parish Registers for Berwickshire — including the parishes of Greenlaw (in which Home Castle stands), Gordon, Eccles, Coldstream, and Duns — are searchable through ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk. Berwickshire's records are generally well preserved for an area so close to the border.
The National Records of Scotland hold significant collections of Home family papers, including estate and tenancy records from the Hirsel and earlier Home seats. The Borders Regional Archive at Hawick also holds relevant local records.
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