The thing is although my possible ancestor's, Barbara's, parish baptism is spelt Macky as with two other children of the family, the other four children have it spelt Mackie. It also seems that the Mackie spelling was the correct one for the family because there are quite a few mentions of them in the Sinclair of Freswick Family Papers in the National Records of Scotland and they are all spelt Mackie, so it seems that that was the spelling/pronunciation that was intended.
There was
no such thing as 'correct' spelling in the 18th (or for that matter the 19th) century. If the clerks decided to spell it Mackie instead of Mackay or McKie or Macky, that's what they decided. I would certainly not get hung up on the spelling of a surname if the other information - parents' given names and residence - match.
