Judy said: "Well in the wacky world of genealogy it isnt wise to rule anything out but I am not at all convinced about the Macaulay bit. She would have had to say it in a strange and drawling way. Having been brought up in Kent and then moved to Scotland I can see how the Gravesend folk might have found her accent hard to understand and she was almost certainly a Gaelic speaker which would have complicated things further. But they would have surely known that many Scottish names began with Mc/M'/Mac." (This applies to McAra too?) But if she was from Lewis, she wouldn't have said it in the (Lowland) Scottish way. 'Mac' would have had full stress, and in 'Amhlaidh', the 'mh' isn't pronounced but the first 'a' is a verry long nasalized diphthong 'ãu'. (Sorry, can't find a 'u' with a tilde on it!) Are you familiar with Lewis Gaelic? Long vowels seem to be twice the length of short in Gaelic, as opposed to the more usual 1½ times approx. However, that's all academic if in fact the Isle of Lewis is wrong. Worth looking hard at 'Idam' to see if it's part of Lewes, E. Sussex? Sara