Where the Campbell name comes from

Campbell is a nickname that stuck, from the Gaelic cam, crooked, and beul, mouth. Cameron is built the same way out of cam and sron, nose, which says something about how Highland naming worked. Clan Campbell traces back to the Britons of Strathclyde, and between 1200 and 1500 the family took hold of Argyll and carried its authority from Edinburgh out to the Hebrides and the western Highlands. There is a separate Irish Campbell from Mac Cathmhaoil, which arrived at the same spelling along a different road.