This Scottish name is the anglicized form of the Gaelic name "Mac Uisdein", the patronymic ("mac" meaning "son of") from the personal name "Uisdean", a Gaelicized form of the Old French name "Huchon", itself a diminutive of the male personal name "Hugh", which is derived from a short form of various Germanic compound names with the first element "hug", heart, mind, spirit. In Scotland "Hutcheon" regularly appears as a christian name during the 14th to 16th Centuries as the equivalent of "Hugh" in the vernacular. The MacHutcheons or McCutheons have long been associated with Ross and the Isles. In the modern idiom the surname has several spelling forms including McCutcheon and McCutheon. One Murdow McHuchone was involved in an attack on the galley of the laird of Balcomie, one of the Fife Adventurers in 1600 and John M'Huitcheon was a Jacobite prisoner of the '45. Matthew McCutcheon was christened at St. Andrew's, Auckland, Durham in September 1841. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of John Roy Makhuchone, which was dated 1495, Antiquities of the Parishes of Scotland, during the reign of King James IV of Scotland, 1488 - 1513. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.