McMac

[tahnan]

Google Books gives 254 hits for "Declan McManus" as a phrase, and 138 for "Declan MacManus". The more definitive-looking books have "MacManus", e.g. Elvis Costello: a bio-bibliography and Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello. But then again, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, and The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography all have "McManus"; and some books have both (Complicated Shadows, for that matter, gives his father's birth name as "Ronald Patrick Ross McManus").

Is there a genuine apathy for "Mc-" vs. "Mac-", so that either one is actually correct? Is it the case that even hopefully reliable sources just don't care enough to get it right?

Comments

[jadelennox]

I know that when I was a library page they told us to shelve all of the Macs and Mcs together before the rest of the Ms, the interspersed with each other, because there was no point separating them. Oddly, now that I am a professional, I don't know if that was a local quirk or standard. Probably because now I work in academic libraries where they use LOC, so it doesn't come up.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

"No point separating", I wonder, because those who have the names don't distinguish; or simply from the practical fact that library patrons can't/don't distinguish, and don't want to deal with having to try two different places to find books by McLarens and MacIntyres?

[foldedfish.livejournal.com]

That was how I was taught to look up things in the library card catalog when I was in elementary school -- Macs and Mcs together before M -- so if that's a quirk, it's not wholly local.

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

Our library had the same arrangement, so I think that's enough data points to extrapolate universality. As for tahnan's query, I think it's the latter. A quick Google on "mc vs mac" pulls up a couple genealogy sites explaining that there's no difference historically between Mc___, Mac___, and even M'___—but one does wonder whether, maybe sometime in the nineteenth century when things like regular spelling came into vogue, a difference may not have arisen.

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

Whoops! I was about to make this point below, but then saw you beat me to it. Once upon a time, yes, name spelling was irregular and the distinguishing between 'McLaren' and 'MacLaren' would have been false precision - closely related individuals might have used different spellings. It's less common now, but you used to often see the 'c' of 'Mc' written superscript and underlined - it's an abbreviation, basically, which is why they were shelved together. And in the case of reprints of older writings, different editors might spell the name of the same individual in different ways. Further confusion is thrown in during the Irish Diaspora, because immigration officials were often somewhat arbitrary about how they spelled newly 'official' names (a common lament for immigrants from many different cultures).

At this point, though? My surname begins with Mc, not Mac, regardless of how it got that way historically, and I'd regard the other as a misspelling :)

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

When I was shelving, I was taught to file both 'Mc' and "Mac' as if they were 'Mac'...not at the /very/ front of the Ms, but after Mabuse and before Maddox.

[cnoocy]

I think that it's an extremely difficult thing for people to track, unless they have a specific reason to pay attention. I'm sure there are some people with Mc or Mac in their names don't care, but all the ones that I've met care as deeply about the distinction as I care about "tz" vs. "cz".

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

See, that was my impression—that anyone whose name it is very much cares which is used to spell it. Which is why I figured that there'd be no shortage of noise in, say, internet hits, but that biographers and reference-book writers would have a specific reason to pay attention...and yet.

[cnoocy]

It's possible that for whatever reason he's given multiple answers in his lifetime. Famous people sometimes go along with the most common misspelling of their name to make life easier.

[davidglasser.livejournal.com]

And in fact, sometimes people with confusing last names change them :)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Well, sure—but you wouldn't change from "McManus" to "MacManus" to avoid the confusion! (You'd change to, say, "Costello". But his father was a musician under the name MacManus.)

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

The rule that I had heard was that Mc signified Irish while Mac signified Scottish. Of course, it took me forever to get the rule right, because the Scottish name in my ancestry is written McLevy. Family members have "explained" that the traditional notation in my family's case is with the c elevated, with a horizontal bar below the c and a pair of horizontal dots below the bar. This symbol is read as ac.

Further complicating things, there is a 19th century author with the last name McLevy, who I believe I am related to, who is described as Irish but living in Scotland.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

P.S.: I disagree with your useage of "hopefully."

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

"hopefully reliable sources" meaning "sources that one hopes are reliable"? It wasn't remarkable to me when I wrote it...is it better if it's "hopefully-reliable sources"?

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

I believe the word you are looking for is "hopefullywise."

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

I realize this is less a losing battle and more a lost battle, but to me, hopefully means "done in a manner which expresses hope" and not "the speaker hopes the statement is true."

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

Do you realize that this battle is not a battle against language change, but in favor of a recent attempt at language change by fiat? That is, hopefully has always been used as an adverb of manner, in a way parallel to the use of "regretably". It can also be used in a manner parallel to the word "regretfully", but there was no feeling that the former usage was wrong until someone arbitrarily railed against it some time in the past century or so.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

You say this as if you think that facts are relevant to prescriptivist language arguments.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

And now I'm quite curious. If you know that this is prescriptivist in a way that has no logic behind it, and you know that the battle is "losing" or "lost", then why do you object to it at all? Why not write it off as being, at worst, a different dialect than yours?

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

I'm just goofing off. I saw a reference to "hopefully" and the existence of the prescriptivist rule, and the acknowledgement that it has no historical backing, somewhere online recently. I think it was in the context of some other dumb language argument, like which of "You are taller than I" or "You are taller than me" is grammatically correct. Perhaps as a result of that, your use of "hopefully" really did ping as incorrect to me, but I already knew the score when I commented about it.

Given the multiple instances of questionable spelling and grammar in my posts on this thread, I'm not really in a position to be a pedant anyway.

Hmm. It's possible that it pinged because you used it noun-phrase-internally rather than because of the meaning, but I'm not sure, especially since I don't really know what "noun-phrase-internally" means.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

On further thought, I think using it noun-phrase-internally may have been the real reason it pinged. I think I would have been less likely to notice or say something if the construction were more like, "Hopefully, reliable sources would care enough to get it right." (Which doesn't mean the same thing as what you wrote, but might be a close enough substitute.)

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

On further further thought, I think the way I would have written it might have been, "Is it the case that even (hopefully) reliable sources just don't care enough to get it right?"

Ordinarily I wouldn't have bothered to comment, but I must have been in that sort of mood. I am finding it interesting to figure out why your phrasing got my attention, and I hope I haven't been doing that at your expense.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought you objected to it being used noun-phrase-internally. Yes, objecting to "hopefully" meaning "I say this with hope" (on analogy with "frankly", "honestly", and many others) is less a lost battle and more a fabricated one. Sorry 'bout that.

[cnoocy]

That really seems like it should have a Unicode mapping, but a quick check doesn't find it.

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

I heard the same, growing up, but have since read that the 'Mc = Irish, Mac = Scottish' rule was invented through a sort of back-formation, and there was originally no geographic distinction. I don't know which is correct.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

Also, I would consider "MacLevy" to be a misspelling. However, some relatives have gone by the nickname "Mac," which strikes me as wrong but they are obviously okay with.

To muddy the waters, further...

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

In the Southern States, back in the 1950's, we were (unofficially) taught that our "drawl" was the result of the influx of Scot-Irish.

I was told that Mac was pronounced, Mahk (rhymes with "back") and that MC (a shorter and more quickly said sound), was like Mik or , thereby saying, (without actually saying) the "i"...

:o)