On the other hand, not only were certain Highland families recorded by surnames from a fairly early date, but the prefix 'Mac – ' could mean not only 'son of' but also 'descendant of', and to that extent such a patronymic, persisting generation by generation, could be 'frozen' as a surname. An obvious example is MacDonald. Angus of the Isles, in the later thirteenth century, was the son of Donald, and his successors retained the 'style' MacDonald, perhaps not so much as a surname in the modern sense but as a mark of their descent; but (as will appear later) the vast majority of the numerous MacDonalds of later times had no kinship with the descendants of Angus or necessarily even derive from anyone called Donald at all.