"people with that in their names are usually descended from gaelc" Your surname only shows one line of the many strands of your ancestry. Someone with no Mac in their name can potentially have far more Gaelic speaking ancestors than someone with a Mac in their name. So ignoring the latest daft rant let me ask you again. How can you possibly know that none of MacColl's ancestors spoke Gaelic or had any connection to Highlander culture? It is such an absurd statement to make. His family came from the Stirlingshire and Perthsire areas which themselves had been Gaelic speaking at one time. Unless his near ancestors had been brought in from elsewhere and had not intermarried with any locals at all then he is almost bound to have Gaelic ancestry. Likewise what makes him anti-Gaelic? Can you actually point to anything concrete at all to suggest he was? He was immersed in Lowland Scots culture but that doesn't mean you are anti-Gaelic. Again that is an absurd suggestion. I don't know but I'm supposing that MacColl was heavily influenced by the Scots Renaissance and in particular its leading exponent a Borderer called Chris Grieve who used the Gaelic sounding name Hugh MacDiarmid. Are you suggesting the writer of The Golden Wine In The Gaeltacht was anti-Gaelic for taking a Gaelic pseudonym too? He may have been a Scots speaker and written in literary Scots but he was also a strong supporter of Scotland's other traditional language.