Last name is McCasland. Always taught to put two small lines under the first c.

Question:My father and grandfather have always signed their names with two small lines under the lower case c. the second c in my last name is capitalized. I have no clue why they did this. We are of Irish decent but I dont know if other mcC's use it. any input on this matter would be great

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: My father and grandfather have always signed their names with two small lines under the lower case c. the second c in my last name is capitalized. I have no clue why they did this. We are of Irish decent but I dont know if other mcC's use it. any input on this matter would be great

Warning - urban legend to be presented - just something I heard that makes sense but I have no solid proof as to it's veracity.

Originally, "mac" or "mc" during times of patronyms was really separated from the "father's" name.

Thus a person would be John mac Donald. When the use of fixed surnames arrived, and someone elected to just extend their patronymic name to a fixed surname, they combined the "mac" or "mc" with Donald to form MacDonald or McDonald. The use of the underlined "C" in "Mc" (I've even seen it with Mac though much rarer) MIGHT be a result of this combination of separate words into a single word....the underscore exemplifying this.

But this could definitely be urban legend because if it were absolutely true, then one would reasonably expect to see the underscore of the C in "mac" to occur with the same frequency as the underscore of the C in "mc". Yet that isn't the case. You would also possibly expect the Z in "Fitz" to be underscored but I've never seen or heard of that. But hey, sounds reasonable on some level at least.

i don't know but would like to know myself, my last name starts with Mc, and we also put the the small lines under the c in our name, i will be looking back to see if there id an answer, great question!!

When I was a child, we were always taught that the proper way to write a name with Mc was with the two lines under the c. As I got older, it seems that people just stopped using the two lines.

From what I've read, the lines under the little 'c' on the Mc represent the fact that it is an abbreviation from the original "Mac". Apparently most "Mc" names started out as "Mac" names, and were abbreviated over time.