Re: [OT] Family names (Wieser)

From: Alex McDonald (alex_mcd_at_btopenworld.com)
Date: 02/17/04 

Date: 17 Feb 2004 07:02:14 -0800

"Beth" <BethStone21@hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com> wrote in message news:<LGlYb.104$Zs.67@newsfep3-gui.server.ntli.net>...
> T.M. Sommers wrote:
> > Beth wrote:
> > > Also, names like "McDonald" actually means "son of Donald"
> (Scottish
> > > way)
> >
> > The 'Scottish way' is 'MacDonald'.
>
> As a McDonald themselves has now told you, this is merely a spelling
> alternative (remembering that, at this time, there was no "standard"
> spellings...like Shakespeare's "MacBeth" (oh dear, Wannabee's going to
> find that funny...I can tell ;) yet Mr.Shaekspeer himself spelt his
> own name in dozens of different ways :)...
>
> But it is a common "urban myth" that "Mc" is Irish and "Mac" is
> Scottish, which isn't actually true...just spelling variations of the
> same thing...note, also, that in the original Scottish Gaelic the "c"
> sound is actually like "ch" in "loch" or German "Ach" (a throaty sound
> :)...the Welsh and Irish (and the Scots but not so much) still keep
> their Celtic tongues alive and it's interesting to compare that the
> Welsh word for "son" is "mab", which is close to "mac"...though the
> languages have separated out over time, there's still many words
> similar and common between them (such as the one mentioned below)...

Beth, please stop speculating! Mc/Mac is pronounced with a hard K
sound, not "-ch" as in loch. Otherwise it would be spelled Mach or
Magh; spelling in Gaelic is pretty tortuous, but very rigorous as to
the sounds produced.

==snipped

> and, certainly, the old Celtic languages were
> "Romanised" when Britain was conquered by the Romans...so, one wonders
> how much is actually "original" and how much came about through
> "influence"...

Welsh and Gaelic are two variants of root Celtic language that split
around 700-800 BC. Welsh was most influenced by Germanic invasions of
the 500-600 AD. The main split between Irish and Scottish Gaelic was
around the time of the Norse invasions of Scotland, around the 1300AD.
To paraphrase Monty Python; "What did the Romans ever do for us?"
Nothing. The Romans did not get far into present day Wales, nor
Scotland; and as far as I know, they never settled anywhere in
Ireland.

> which isn't a strange idea at all because guess what
> we're speaking when we're speaking English? Basically, an _entire
> language_ that was born that way...a mish-mash patchwork quilt of a
> language that came about as a "common tongue" between all the
> different peoples of Britain at the time, who all spoke different
> things: Anglo-Saxons with a Germanic edge, French was there, some
> Viking stuff, the Celts (and though the Celts of Britain like to
> sometimes think they were the "originals" on this small island, they
> were _invaders_ too...just the oldest ones we actually know anything
> about...

Not including the Picts, of course... You're woefully missing the mark
on this subject.

==snipped 

-- 
Regards
Alex McDonald
Quantcast