Mostly the were from Craig Millar and Liberton then Midlothian area.
Both Craigmillar and Liberton are
in the county of Midlothian, so if they lived in either of those they were already in Midlothian.
G F Black says that the surname is of territorial origin from the lands of Auchterlonie in Angus.
There were lots of families using both spellings in areas. There is a gentleman by the name of Walter Savage in Melbourne Australia that had tracked all the families and broke them down to clans during his research.
A clan, generally, is larger than a family - a clan contains families rather than the other way round!
Lonie from the Gaelic (somthing Lonidh) means a pathway. Auchter means "high" - as it comes from the area of the Ochil Hills in Scotland. Though I have seen it translated as "a field of blackbirds".
'Auchter' is usually from Gaelic 'uachdar' meaning, as you say, a high place. However it could be from 'achadh' meaning field. 'Blackbird' is 'lon-dubh' or simply 'lon', which can also mean a marsh or morass. It's anybody's guess, really, whether the name means 'high marsh' or 'field of blackbirds' or something entirely different.
Auchterlonie family coat of arms haves multiples of 8 buckles/scallops on the shield - aucht is 8 in german funny that !
It's actually 'acht' not 'aucht'. I wouldn't lay too much significance on that. I wonder whether the scallops have anything to do with family members making pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela?
From my understanding the Auchterlonies lives amoung the Picts
They certainly lived in parts of Scotland which had been in Pictland, but the Picts had been absorbed by the time the Normans came along, so they would not have been contemporaries of the Auchterlonies.
they were east coast Scots so non clanish
Certainly all the early references to the name seem to have been in Fife and Angus, and only later do they appear in, for example, Glasgow.
There is an Ochterlonie Tartan but I dont know the background.
There are no modern tartans which can be authentically ascribed to a particular clan before the 18th century. As a Lowland family, not a Highland clan, the Auchterlonies are unlikely to have worn tartan or kilts until Highland dress was reinvented in the early 19th century. I expect the Auchterlonie tartan dates from this time too.
The earliest was Woutier de Aughterlowny - who signed the Ragman Roll in 1296 as an act of Fielty to King Edward Longshanks. Remember Braveheart - William Wallace did not sign it - so he was treated as a traitor.
Several points of interest here. The given name Woutier (Walter) points firmly at a Norman background. (G F Black also mentions a John de Othirlony who appears in the register of the abbey of Arbroath in 1226-9, 70 years before Woutier)
William Wallace was a Scot, a subject of the King of Scots. King Edward of England had no right to regard him as a traitor, because he was never one of King Edward's subjects. If Walter de Auchterlony, a Scot, gave an oath of fealty to the King of England, that could have been held to be an act of treason towards the King of Scots, except that even some of the Kings of Scots did homage to the Kings of England for the estates they owned in England.
And as for the film 'Braveheart' - the kindest thing you can say about it is that it contains a load of historical inaccuracies - it isn't a reliable guide to anything other than Hollywood's lack of interest in authenticity!
