I’m never quite sure if it’s Màraig or Maaruig or even Mhàraig. You see all of them in use with the Ordnance Survey using Maraig for the township and Mharaig for the Loch and geographical features. I love this quirkiness and can envisage a Victorian surveyor banging a blackhouse door asking  ”Where exactly are we my good woman – and how do you spell that?”

In Mike Parker’s highly recommended Map Addict, about his life-long obsession with the Ordnance Survey, he reproduces a wonderful passage from the  instructions provided to surveyors in the OS Field Guide 1905:

For names generally the following are the best individual authorities, and should be taken in the order given: Owners of property: estate agents: clergymen: postmasters and schoolmasters, if they have been some time in the district; rate collectors; road surveyors; borough and county surveyors; gentlemen residing in the district; Local Government Board Orders; local histories; good directories …..Respectable inhabitants of some position should be consulted. Small farmers or cottagers are not to be depended on, even for the names of the places they occupy, especially as to the spelling, but a well-educated and intelligent occupier is, of course, a good authority.