The Scottish Names

Family members may notice  that I am not using the spelling of the family name that we grew up with, which was “Macnee”.  I asked Dad once why it had no capital ‘N’.  He told me that his father had chosen the lower case.  What I did not know, and what Dad did not divulge, or perhaps did not know, was that over the years his father’s last name was spelt in various combinations, before he finally adopted both the small ‘n’ and the ‘ee’ ending which we inherited.  

As I tracked the records I found – and had to check – at least eight different spellings of surnames in this family {Mac- or Mc -Nee, -Nie, -Knee or -Knie.  And found more – M’Nee etc, occasionally a McNey or McNey)   – quite apart from misleading transcription errors.  But our great, great-grandfather and his son and grandson were fairly consistently McNie, while it was our grandfather who determined that we would inherit the Macnee spelling.  

Until record keeping became a matter of importance to the state, names were written rather randomly.  Standardization of names came into force after the introduction in 1855 of mandatory registration of births, deaths and marriages in Great Britain, and even after that it took some time for consistency to take root.  It was not until the sixteenth century that surnames became common as a means of identifying families.  Before then ‘mac’ strictly meant ‘son of’ as Ian mac Douglas, and Douglas mac Robert. But extended family relationships were indicated by surnames such as MacDouglas or MacRobert, and eventually the surname usage came to dominate over the limited patriarchal style.  There was a female version, ‘vac’ or ‘vc’, which dropped out of usage, but Scottish women continued to be referred to in the records by their maiden name after they married.  

Contrary to what we were taught, it has little to do with a distinction between Ireland and Scotland.  Rather both usages are common to both societies, and ‘Mac’ and ‘Mc’ are completely synonymous. One explanation is that ‘Mac’ was often abbreviated as M’ in early written documents as in M’Donald.  The open-apostrophe, this theory suggests, was later corrupted as a small superscripted “c”.  In Scottish directories all versions of the ‘mac’ surnames are given in a single listing, alphabetizing by the initial of the second syllable of the name.  

Finally, it is helpful to have an understanding of the traditional naming pattern for children.  Sons and daughters were named strictly according to a sequence of family relations.  Sons were named for father’s father; then mother’s father; then father; and subsequently father’s brothers.  Daughters’ names followed a similar sequence: mother’s mother; father’s mother; mother; then mother’s sisters.  It is a very useful clue when searching for family relatives.  Our family is replete with Roberts and James’s, Elizabeths, Helens, Anns and Margarets, and in the early years Johns, Alexanders and Duncans, and is often discovered through the combination of first names.