However, it also occurred within Scotland itself. For instance, in several cases MacDonald became Donaldson. This happened as Macs and Mcs immigrated to other countries and other parts of their names were changed to be more easily pronounced by the people there.
Initial caps in word for mac mac#
Aside from Mac being shortened to Mc, in some cases the prefix was dropped altogether. These surnames have gone through a lot of changes over the years. Now you might have John MacDonald Vcmaster, but this tradition was never incredibly popular and is not as prevalent today. To a lesser extent, “Vc” was used to denote “grandson of,” so that a person would have two surnames. The daughter prefix was Nc, short for the Gaelic “nighean mhic.” Surnames for women like NcDonald were fairly popular in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, but after that time there were only a few secluded mentions of them. There was also a prefix for “daughter of” but these mostly fell out of favour years ago. Other Mc and Mac surnames come from some physical feature of the person, such as Macilbowie, which means “son of the blonde man,” while the more recognizable Mackenzie (ironically enough now a popular first name for girls) means “son of the fair one.” Again, every Brown, White, Green, Bruin, Weiss, LeBlanc, etc. This practice can be seen elsewhere-every Smith, Baker, and Cook likely had someone in that occupation somewhere in their ancestry. In this case, John’s father was a master of some sort, therefore John is the “son of a master.” Master is not a proper noun and thus does not need to be capitalized.
In addition, some Mc and Mac names don’t include the name of the father, but the father’s profession. Surnames have been around so long that sometimes they get changed, and in some families, the second capital letter was gotten rid of. Since proper nouns are capitalized, you would write “son of Donald,” not “son of donald.” In the same way, you would usually write MacDonald rather than Macdonald, but there are obviously exceptions. You can probably see why Mc and Mac names typically contain a second capital letter.
Back in the day, it was common to differentiate people with the same name by also calling them by the names of their fathers, which is how this sort of surname started to become popular. Someone with the last name of MacDonald is sort of like someone with the last name of Johnson-likely, each had ancestors with the name of Donald or John. They both just mean “son of” and can be used by anyone of either descent or religion. Similarly, the assertion that Mac names are Protestant while Mc names are Catholic doesn’t have a shred of truth to it. Mc is just an abbreviation of Mac, and both can actually be abbreviated further to the much less common M’.Īs you might guess from this, the myth that a Mac name denotes Scottish heritage while a Mc name denotes Irish heritage is simply not true.
The short story is that “Mc” and “Mac” are prefixes that mean “son of.” Early inconsistencies in records are what led to having both Mc and Mac prefixes. David asks: Why is the second “C” capitalized in names like “MacCleod”?
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