Back in March, I sent out info on the McLeas from the Parish Records of Rothesay, Bute, to the McLea/Livingston Discussion Forum:

http://www.clanmclea.co.uk/forum/Show-Message.Asp?ID=1134

When I did that, Rob Livingston was curious if the early records actually used the form "McOnLea" (with all three capitals or something similar) as I had written. I had thought at that time that that was the case and had written so, but I hadn't had a chance to go and scan the pages to show him.

Today, I copied the the first instances of McLeas in the Rothesay records (four births in 1693, 1694, and 1695, when the book begins in 1691). The first McLea is called "McLea" but the next two are called McOnLea (or something like Mc'onLea).

For those who are curious, I scanned those in, and you can see them here.

http://kitenet.nethttp://kitenet.net/~kyle/photos/genealogy/16941125_McOnLea_Rothesay.tiff http://kitenet.nethttp://kitenet.net/~kyle/photos/genealogy/16951102_McOnLea_Rothesay.tiff

(I have the full pages plus the title page in a 32MB PDF file if anyone is interested as well.)

This tells us something of the etymology of the name McLea. Important Gaelic linguistics that I don't quite have a handle on, but I'll post something from someone intelligent at some point.

Kyle=