While researching some family history in Huntingdon, PQ, which is where my Great-Great-Grandfather settled, I discovered something interesting. Not only was my family’s name misspelled as McN., there was not a single Mac* in the church’s records. It would seem that the minister of St. Andrew’s kirk simply couldn’t have troubled himself to differentiate, and spelled everyone’s (99% of them Scottish) surnames as Mc*.
It was my Grandfather who changed the spelling of our last name to MacN., saying “Have you ever heard of anything so stupid as a syllable without a vowel?”.
That would square with the observation that “Mc” was originally simply shorthand for “Mac” and was not originally intended to actually represent a different species.
Dear Mangetout:
My Grandfather was raised and educated at a time when the rules of grammar and orthography were prescriptive, not descriptive. The syllable, they were taught, consisted of a minimum of a vowel. A syllable could be V, CV, CCV, VC, VCC, CVC, CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC, but the vowel was considered mandatory. You could have a silent vowel, but not a consonant on its own.
I don’t know how these strict grammarians resolved the word ‘Rhythm’ - the ‘y’ is clearly functioning as a vowel (and is the default transliteration of epsilon), but -thm is a separate syllable in virtually all pronunciations and clearly contains no vowel. At any rate, my Grandfather considered ‘Mc’ deeply offensive to his orthographical sensibilities.
A side note - in history, you will occasionally find women who use ‘Nic’ instead of ‘Mac’; ‘Mac’ means ‘Son of …’ and ‘Nic’ means ‘Daughter of …’ I haven’t tried to get away with giving my daughter a totally different surname from either of her parents - I have enough people who can’t spell it as it is…
You don’t need to go into history to find this. I’ve got bilingual Irish relatives, who choose to use the anglicised forms of their names when using English, and the Irish forms when in Irish. (Although as a side note, they happen to be using ‘O’ and ‘Ni’ rather than the Mac/Nic situation mentioned.)
For Flander’s further amusement: (but you have to pronounce “making” as “macking” in the song. And to add to the fun, “marry” should be pronounced like “marry”).
Now there’s a daft name for you. “Mack”. I can sort of see how something once used as an abbreviation became used as a real name, but it always leaves me thinking “well, yes, Mac bloody what exactly?” Hmm. Rest of name, please?"
The long story is this. My Dad’s nickname was Mack. Or Mac. Whichever. As long as he lived. Only then did my brother start being called Mac. Some people don’t know his real name. My nickname was Mackie, because I was ‘just’ a girl.
A buddy of mine explained it thusly: McDonald was pronounced Mick-don-ald.
If the c following the M was underscored, McDonald was pronounced Mack-don-ald.
His name was McIntyre (underscored c) and we called him Mac for short.
‘Mack’ is also one of many short nicknames for ‘Malcolm’. Given a choice between ‘Mack’ and ‘Malkie’, I’d opt for ‘Mack’. On our Fraser side, I lost count of how many 'Mack Fraser’s I encountered.
Lady Mack - There’s also the delight of discovering that there’s at least a dozen variant spellings for every Scottish name. I have been told that it stems from sons getting disowned by their fathers who didn’t want to lose their affiliation with the clan. The story is probably too good to be true…
Nonetheless, it can drive you bananas as you look back and discover brothers with different spellings of their last names, cousins with the exactly the same names but different birth/death dates, unrelated people with the same names distinguished by their hair colour, height, geographical location. It really is like the Nac MacFeegle with “‘Not as wee as wee Jock’ Jock” when you get church records that refer to Red Archie and Black Archie…
I attended high school with a young man whose last name had the same spelling(but a different pronunciation) as a local politician. Note: No Mc, Mac, or other such thing, just a single straightforward syllable, with differing vowel sounds.
One day the young man told the class that his last name was pronounced the way it was because his Grandfather got mad at his family, and didn’t want to be associated with them. So he changed the pronunciation (but not the spelling) of his last name.
“Mack”. I can sort of see how something once used as an abbreviation became used as a real name, but it always leaves me thinking “well, yes, Mac bloody what exactly?” Hmm. Rest of name, please?"
