Innis
Lords of the Laich of Moray — one of the longest continuously recorded families in Scottish history
| Clan name | Clan Innes |
| Gaelic name | Innis |
| Name meaning | From the Gaelic innis, meaning an island, river meadow, or fertile low-lying ground — a topographic name for a family settled on such land |
| Motto | Be traist (Be faithful) |
| Territory | Innes and Drainie (Moray), various Aberdeenshire and Banffshire estates |
| Origin | Innes, Moray (near Elgin) |
The Innes family take their name from their ancestral estate of Innes in the Laich of Moray — the fertile coastal plain east of Elgin where the land is rich and the climate kinder than the Highland uplands behind it. The name itself comes from the Gaelic innis, an island or river meadow, describing the flat well-watered ground on which the family originally settled.
A charter of 1226 confirmed Berowald of Innes and his heirs in their lands — making the Innes family one of the best-documented ancient families in Scottish history, with a continuous written record of eight centuries in the same territory. The family built Innes House, a remarkable late Renaissance mansion in Moray, in the 1640s — a building that still stands as one of the finest 17th-century houses in Scotland.
The Innes family produced scholars and ecclesiastics as well as soldiers and politicians. Sir Thomas Innes of Learney served as Lord Lyon King of Arms — the head of Scottish heraldry — in the mid-20th century, and was one of the foremost genealogists and heraldists of his generation, writing the definitive modern account of the Scottish clan system.
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Subscribe Free →The Innes family name spread through Scotland — particularly the northeast — and then across the Atlantic with emigration. The name is found throughout Nova Scotia and Ontario in Canada, and in the American South, where Scots-Irish settlement was concentrated.
Many Innes families emigrated to Australia in the 19th century, and the name is found in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland among families tracing to Scottish origin.
National Records of Scotland. Moray Archives in Elgin. The Innes Papers at the National Archives of Scotland. The Court of the Lord Lyon (Sir Thomas Innes's own records are held there). Burke's Peerage and Burke's Landed Gentry for the baronetcy lines.