The Campsie Fells at blue hour, mist in the glen and Scots pines in the foreground

The Kinkead family · Since 1238

Welcome, Kinkeads & family

This is the family's home on the web — a quiet front door to the people, projects, and stories we're building. Some of what lives here is public; some is private and shared by invitation.

Read the story of the name Discover Aetheria →

Cover illustrationThe Campsie Fells, Stirlingshire

In this issue

Four stories · one family
An open family history book with a hand-drawn family tree, lit by a single candle
The family history, kept and handed down

01 · The Name

Ceann Cad: at the front of the battle

cyncad.com isn't a random handle. Cyncad is one of the oldest recorded forms of our own family name — the line that runs from Gaelic Scotland through Ulster to Kentucky and becomes Kinkead.

Its roots are Gaelic: Ceann (head, chief, commander) joined with cad (battle). An 1857 reference, An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names (William Arthur), defines Cyncad with exactly that meaning.

“The front, or chief, of the battle.”

In Our Kentucky Pioneer Ancestry (June Lee Mefford Kinkead, Gateway Press, 1992), our family historian traces the name back to a 1238 Gaelic form, Ceann Cad.

A ruined medieval tower house on a knoll in a misty glen
Stirlingshire, where the name took root

02 · The Line

Eight centuries, by the record

  1. 1238Ceann CadThe Gaelic root form, recorded in Our Kentucky Pioneer Ancestry.
  2. c. 1250Kincaith / KincatheA place name in Stirlingshire, Scotland.
  3. 1450KyncadeFirst recorded as a surname — Robert de Kyncade, Edinburgh.
  4. 1857CyncadDocumented in An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names.
  5. 1992The bookJune Lee Mefford Kinkead publishes the history that ties the line together.
  6. 2026cyncad.comThe name comes home — online, and back at the front of the battle.
Rolling Kentucky hills at dusk with an old dry-stone fence and a lone oak

Gaelic Scotland · Ulster · Kentucky

One name, carried across an ocean and eight centuries.

Crest badge: KINKEAD around a triple-towered castle with a drawn sword, and the motto This I'll Defend

03 · The Crest

This I'll Defend

A triple-towered castle, and rising from the centre tower an arm grasping a drawn sword — the crest of the Kincaids, from the lands of Kincaid in Campsie, Stirlingshire.

Our modern badge carries that crest and motto in the family's own colours, drawn from a contemporary Kinkead tartan.

Close-up of woven Kinkead tartan in pine, charcoal, red and copper
  • Pine
  • Charcoal
  • Heather
  • Heritage red
  • Copper
  • Silver mist

04 · Projects

What the family is building
The glowing whirlpool nexus of the Aetherian Sea, ley lines of light running to distant continents LIVE · THE MAIN EVENT

Aetheria

A dark-fantasy world where mathematics underpins reality: a novel, a two text-based RPGs you can play tonight, an animated short, and a 3D game in the forge. The largest thing we're building right now.

Discover Aetheria → Play now
In development

More on the way

Additional sites and tools, including Erica Kinkead's work, will appear here as they come online.

Private · by invitation

Family apps

A set of private tools for the family, shared by invitation. Details to follow.