The Ancestors of the Campbells were great territorial Lords in Scotland even before their emergence as a clan in the late 1200s. They held lands in Perthshire, Clackmannan, Dunbarton, Ayr and Argyll.

The traditional Gaelic pedigrees give the origins of the family as descended from the Britonic Celts of the Lennox, immediately to the east of Argyll, and based upon the Dun of the Britons — now called Dunbarton Rock. The original family name was O’Duine (pronounced “Oh doin”). Probably about the time of the death of Somerled, regulus of Argyll in 1163, Gillespic O’Duine married Eva, Dalreadic heiress on Lochawe in Argyll.

The lands of Lochawe were likely confirmed and expanded during King Alexander’s expedition to subdue Argyll in 1222 when Gillespic and Eva O’Duine’s son Duncan would have lived. His son Dougall O’Duine is said to have been given the nickname “Cam Beul” or curved mouth. He must have been much loved by his sons, for all of them took Cambel as their family name within the O’Duine kin. Dougall’s second son, Sir Gillespic Campbell of Lochawe, married Efferick, granddaughter of Duncan , Earl of Carrick, whose great-grandson would be King Robert Bruce. This royal kinship, reinforced by later marriages of Campbell chiefs to Stewart daughters, obliged the Campbells to take up as their national role the protection of the royal house and realm from risings in the west. In this they were consistent until the Reformation of 1560, after which they held the support of the reformed religion in the face of royal changes of faith supporting Protestant succession.

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