If You Were To Name A Son After A Scotsman?

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I suspect the abbreviation M'Cheyne has to do with the difficulty of producing
M'Cheyne (with a superscripted "c") on an old fashioned typewriter/typesetting. The name itself is clearly Mc-Cheyne but even in the computer age, I can't figure out how to produce it on this site. I tried cutting and pasting it and the site autocorrected it to a quotation mark! In contrast, producing a quotation mark is easy.

That's the problem I had. I don't why the Puritan Board's software thinks it knows how to spell better than we do!
 
Difference of opinions here.

I found something online (no solid sources, though) that said the apostrophe was commonly used from the 18th to the 20th centuries, and in the 20th century the superscripted c became fashionable.

In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, the word mac means "son". For whatever reason, in Irish surnames, Mac is usually Anglicised as "Mc", while Scottish names are more often written, in English, with "Mac", with, usually, the second part of the name also capitalized, although not always.

So, ordinarily,

Irish Mac Domhnall becomes "McDonald"
Scottish Mac Domhnaill becomes "MacDonald" or "Macdonald".

This doesn't answer why the apostrophe came into use, nor why it has since fallen out of use. I had expected it's merely a spelling convention that reflected the pronunciation, but apparently that's not the case, since (according to Wikipedia) "M'Cheyne" is pronounced "Mak-Shayn". (All this time I've been saying it wrong.)

Out of curiousity, does anyone know whether Robert Murray M'Cheyne spoke Gaelic?
 
I found something online (no solid sources, though) that said the apostrophe was commonly used from the 18th to the 20th centuries, and in the 20th century the superscripted c became fashionable.

In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, the word mac means "son". For whatever reason, in Irish surnames, Mac is usually Anglicised as "Mc", while Scottish names are more often written, in English, with "Mac", with, usually, the second part of the name also capitalized, although not always.

So, ordinarily,

Irish Mac Domhnall becomes "McDonald"
Scottish Mac Domhnaill becomes "MacDonald" or "Macdonald".

This doesn't answer why the apostrophe came into use, nor why it has since fallen out of use. I had expected it's merely a spelling convention that reflected the pronunciation, but apparently that's not the case, since (according to Wikipedia) "M'Cheyne" is pronounced "Mak-Shayn". (All this time I've been saying it wrong.)

Out of curiousity, does anyone know whether Robert Murray M'Cheyne spoke Gaelic?
If the pronunciation is Mak-Shayn, is the spelling actually MacCheyne, instead of M'Cheyne?

Too inconclusive at this point to commit to a son’s name.
 
If the pronunciation is Mak-Shayn, is the spelling actually MacCheyne, instead of M'Cheyne?

Too inconclusive at this point to commit to a son’s name.

"MacCheyne" would follow the ordinary rules for Anglicising a Scottish Gaelic name. However, those rules are by no means consistently applied.

In this case, "M'Cheyne" is by far the most common spelling, although some references to him are written "M'Cheyne". (There's a M'Cheyne Memorial Church named after him in Dundee.)
 
"MacCheyne" would follow the ordinary rules for Anglicising a Scottish Gaelic name. However, those rules are by no means consistently applied.

In this case, "M'Cheyne" is by far the most common spelling, although some references to him are written "M'Cheyne". (There's a M'Cheyne Memorial Church named after him in Dundee.)
The building is usually referred to as Mc Cheyne, even in posts referring to the man as M'Cheyne. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Murray_M'Cheyne
 
Ha!

So another question for you all:

In choosing these names, have the men had an impact on your own lives? Or do you simply like the sound of their names as they work with your own surnames? A combination?

What would be your thought process in choosing?

Thanks.
 
My paternal side hails from Scotland. I was purposefully named after William Wallace, well before Braveheart became a thing.
 
Houston Rutherford Cross has a good ring to it. You could call him Huey for short!

"What's the news today, Huey?" :)
 
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