A series of articles about genealogy and family tartans.
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I recently had a visitor to this site write and ask me why there's not an Irish McDonald tartan, relating that a family member informed him that Irish surnames are spelled with Mc-, while Scottish surnames are spelled with Mac-. As long as I've been working with tartan, I'd never heard such a thing, but having had extensive experience with surname spelling permutations while researching my family history, told him that the McDonald spelling, as opposed to MacDonald spelling, likely had more to do with spelling by the census-taker than a country of origin.
It turns out that my supposition is supported by renowned tartan scholar Philip D. Smith.
There is absolutely no truth to the widely held belief that "Mac" denotes a name of Scottish origin and "Mc" indicates an Irish name. This myth is especially held in America, ignoring the fact that early census takers were instructed to abbreviate "Mac" as "Mc." "Mc" is always an abbreviation of "Mac" and the two are used interchangeably. An Irish Mac- is sometimes Ma- as in "MacGuire" "Maguire."
There is also the now mostly obsolete, M' spelling, for example, M'Donald, which I have seen myself while scouring through census records from the 1800s in Kentucky. I suspect that particular census taker had more than a drop of Scottish blood flowing through his veins, which spurred him to record surnames in that manner.
It's important to remember that many of our early ancestors couldn't read or write, so they wouldn't have spelled their surname to the census-taker. I learned the phonetic-spelling lesson myself in a particularly frustrating search for who I thought was a non-Scottish ancestor - my great-grandmother Margaret "Maggie" Sears. This was my father's grandmother - she shouldn't be that difficult to find, I thought. After searching for days, I ended up reading through the county census where she married line by line, and finally found her family listed as Sayers. I then adopted a strong Kentucky accent and said aloud, "Sayers" and "Sears." They sounded almost identical with that accent!
I found it interesting as well that while browsing the 1891 Scotland census that there were many more surnames spelled with the Mc- prefix than Mac-. So, if your surname is McDonald, rather than MacDonald - or McNeil, McLaughlin, McIntyre, or even McKenzie - it's most likely due to the census-taker spelling it that way, and is no indication as to their country of origin.
When tracing your family history it's good to check both Mac- and Mc- spellings - and other phonetic spellings as well. Continuing with using MacDonald as an example, I'd search for MacDonell, MacDonnell, McDonald, McDonell, and McDonnell.
Regardless, for sorting purposes on this website I have listed Mac- and Mc- tartans spelled as they are recorded on The Scottish Register of Tartans.
And Margaret "Maggie" Sears? It turns out that she had Scottish heritage after all. Further digging turned up her mother's line of Robertson - one of the top twelve most common surnames in Scotland for over 150 years.
June 2023
Sources:
Tartan For Me! Philip D. Smith, 1984
(Disclosure: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links to the Plaidwerx shop at Zazzle, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)
Clan MacDonald Postcard: Digitally cleaned and enhanced vintage illustration with tartan frame. (Zazzle)
Clan Robertson tartan iPhone case, from the Clan Robertson Tartan Collection in the Plaidwerx shop at Redbubble.
Clan Robertson tartan fabric is available in seven fabric types from the Plaidwerx shop at Zazzle.