Caller - “Cathy Mackie. M.C.K.I.E…Mackie.”
WTF? M.C.K.I.E. does NOT spell “mac-kee”, it spells “mi-KEE” like McDonalds. The Mc is quick. There is no A in your name. Your name is not how you say it.
Furthermore, McAffee Anti-virus software should not be pronounced “MAC-a-fee”. By its spelling, it’s “mc-AF-ee”.
All the other McNames get this right! McArthur, McBride, McFarland, McDuffey, etc. I could go on. Imagine proncing McGrady like “MAC-greh-dee”. Follow the rules! Learn your name!
Seriously, I don’t get this at all. Sure it makes it a little confusing when trying to transcribe someone’s name, but name pronunciation is passed through oral tradition. If a family has sad their name “MacKie” for generations, do they need to legally change the spelling to MacKie to make it an acceptable pronunciation? If language, grammar, and pronunciation are mutable over time, why are names any less so?
Even if you’re right, you saying “mi-KEE” is no more or less correct than saying “ma-KEE”, which really isn’t that far off from what she said. Around here, I’ll hear McDonald’s pronounced “mic-DON-ahlds” or “mac-DON-ahlds”; is one more or less correct than the other? Is it possible that the vowel sound used when pronouncing such words is regional or cultural or something?
The only time I’ll have a problem with someone’s name is if it’s completely impossible to guess the pronunciation based on the spell, like if they pronounce it “Smith” but spell it “Johnson”.
No, they say “Mac” in Ireland for that too. My ex was a McDonnell. The Irish language version of this was “Mac Domhnhaill” (or in her case, because she was female, “Nic Domhnhaill” with some mutation to the D that made it into a G sound…), so the English language version was pronounced “Mac Donnell”. It’s an ancient, rather than a new thing.
We have a customer whose last name is spelled Przybylski. It is pronounced “shi-bel-skee” and another spelled Przybysz prounced “ba-shib-iz”, apparently.
Hah! And we Americans get regular lectures from the Britishers about our blindness to irony! So that’s double irony! It burrrrrrns!
Note the quotation marks around “correctly.” I’m using the word only because the OP introduced the concept of “correctness” into this discussion. Such quotation marks can be used to introduce the idea of sarcasm or doubt. As in “I doubt that there is any such thing as correct in this circumstance, but if you’re going to get shirty about it, you’re the one that’s in the wrong.”
And, if you want to get nitpicky, “Maguire” has no “mac,” “mc,” or “m’,” in the spelling so obviously what I said doesn’t apply to it.
The only people in Canada who say MickIntosh for McIntosh are francophones (but not if they have scottish ancestry). They quickly realize once they talk to someone english that they’ve been saying their neighbour’s name wrong for years.
With respect to McKie , it’s a sept of Mackay, so traces back to Mac Aoidh, i.e. It’s been pronounced that way for a long, long time. We’re talking a family that can trace it’s routes back for a 1000 years or thereabouts.
While it’s only been in very recently that Americans have managed to mangle the pronunciation of Mc to Mick.
It’s to balance out all the times I’ve enunciated garefully and spelled my last name “It’s MacFergus, M-A-C…”* and still it gets written down and pronounced McFergus more often than not.
