Surname spellings and an “a” of a difference
THE SITUATION would have been amusing if the gentleman hadn’t been so deadly serious about the matter. He was het up because the clerk entering his name concluded the spelling of his surname with the letters “ie,” instead of “ey.” “No, you’ve spelled it wrong. The way you’ve got it down you make it look French. We’re English!”
A quiet correction was all that was necessary, rather than appearing to seek a rematch of the Battle of Agincourt.
You might be surprised how many folks seem ready to shed blood over the spelling of their names, perhaps putting them into the ethnicity of a group other than the one to which they do (or wish to) belong. Hundreds of Irish Roches have no trouble with that spelling, but some who became Roach by accident or design will argue that they are not and their families have never been “French.” I’d recommend a little research before repeating that claim.
Most last names can be written in two or more ways. Smith/Smythe, Currie/Curry, Doucet/Doucette, for example. David Dorward, author of Scottish Surnames, notes that, “Spelling of surnames did not become standardized until well into the 19th century.” Yet, this matter is subject to confusion and even stubborn insistence that there is but one way to spell a particular name.
The most common issue with names in the Maritimes is that surrounding the way we spell, in English if you please, the Gaelic form of “son of” as a prefix to a surname. Is it Mac or Mc? To quote Dorward again, “The form ‘Mc’ is simply a printer’s contraction and implies nothing as to the history of the name or the genealogy of its bearer.”
Somewhere ‘midst the heather or among the shamrocks I can hear the chant: “Mac is Scottish and Mc is Irish.” I daresay the Irish would happily accept the famous early clergyman and founder of Pictou Academy—Dr. Thomas McCulloch—as their own. Hibernians can trade William MacCoy, MLA, to the Scots in exchange.
Let’s see what some experts have to say about the matter. In Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry, Kathleen Corey cautions, “do not say that you know your family was always ‘Mac’ and not ‘Mc’ or vice versa. You may know now, but the registrar or your ancestor may not have been so positive.” Patrick Woulfe (Dublin) quoted an old verse which begins, “By Mac and O/ You’ll always know/ True Irishmen, they say....” The good father followed with a tome of Irish surnames in 464 pages. In every instance where it occurs he used the spelling Mac, and he was an Irish Catholic priest writing a learned book.
Perhaps the best summing up I can offer comes from the pen of the former Chief Herald of Ireland, Dr. Edward MacLysaght: “I may refer here to the widespread belief outside Ireland that Mac is essentially a Scottish prefix.... The idea is absurd, for many of our foremost Irish families bear Mac names.” We find MacNamara, MacDermott and MacGuinness among the many instances he lists.
The conclusion I draw from all of these, and others whom space will not allow me to quote, is that many early settlers coming from Ireland and Scotland were not personally literate in English. The records of their day wrote the names any which way, without much concern about whether a spelling was Hibernian or Caledonian.
Thousands of Irish immigrants flooded ashore in Atlantic Canada between 1815 and 1850. Some families who had arrived a generation or two earlier tried to distance themselves by insisting on changing the spelling of their “Mc” names to “Mac” in hopes that they would not be lumped in with the newcomers, many of whom were poor, hungry and ill.
The last laugh, as Dorward wrote, is that “Mc” is just a contraction of “Mac.” The typesetter arranged (in reverse in those days) the characters M’ as an abbreviated form. That simple space saving measure gave birth to that “a” of a difference.
Dr. Terrence M. Punch is a Member of the Order of Canada. His latest book, Montbéliard Immigration to Nova Scotia, 1749-1752, will appear in a revised edition in 2015 and be available from genealogical.com.