of the Cave. Murdoch died in 1375, and was thus almost
contemporaneous with the author of the Gaelic genealogy, which,
translated, proceeds up to this Kenneth as follows: Murdoch, son
of Kenneth, son of John, son of Kenneth, and so on, as already
given at page 39 to Gilleoin of the Aird.

At this interesting stage it may be well to explain how the name
Mackenzie came to be pronounced and written as it now is. John,
the son of this Kenneth, would be called in the original native
Gaelic, "Ian Mac Choinnich," John, son of Kenneth. In that form
it was unpronounceable to those unacquainted with the native tongue.
The nearest approach the foreigner could get to its correct
enunciation would be Mac Coinni or Mac Kenny, which ultimately came
to be spelt Mac Kenzie, Z in those days having exactly the same
value and sound as the letter V; and the name, although spelt
with a Z instead of a Y would be pronounced Mac Kenny, as indeed
we pronounce in our own day, in Scotland, such names as Menzies,
Macfadzean, and several others, as if they were still written with
the letter Y. The two letters being thus of the same value, after
a time came to be used indiscriminately in the word Kenny or
Kenzie, and the letter z having subsequently acquired a different
value and sound of its own, more allied to the letter S than to the
original Y, the name is pronounced as if it were written Mackensie.

Kenneth was the son and heir of Angus, the direct representative
of a long line of ancestors up to Gilleoin na li'Airde, the common
progenitor of the O'Beolan Earls of Ross, the Clann Ghille-Andrais,
who about the end of the fourteenth century called themselves
Rosses, and of the Mackenzies. The close connection by blood and
marriage between the O'Beolan Earls of Ross and Kenneth's family