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Capital letters in the middle of surnames

Discussion in 'Ask Peter' started by Pauline, Jan 30, 2018.

  1. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    I noticed recently that when entering a surname with a capital letter in the middle, McPhun for example, that when you add or save the entry the surname auto-corrects to lose the middle capital - Mcphun.

    I'm guessing this won't matter for matching entries as the same thing will happen to everyone but I thought I'd mention it.
     
  2. Bryman

    Bryman LostCousins Megastar

    I only have one instance of such a capital letter in the middle of a name, ie McClure, but that is a middle name rather than a surname. In this case the capitalization was not lost and there have been no matches so far.
     
  3. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    I haven’t tried with a middle name, and this is the first time I’ve entered a surname with a capital letter in the middle.

    In fact, with the 1881 census, the surname has been mistrancribed to include a space - Mc Phun - and entering it exactly as transcribed, the middle capital doesn’t auto- correct. It only happened when entering it without the space.
     
  4. Bryman

    Bryman LostCousins Megastar

    I used CNTL-F to search for instances of "Mc" in my list of entered ancestors on My Ancestors page. Now I have repeated the search for the double characters "O'" as in the surname O'Brien and found 9 instances of which 6 are matched. The character "B" remained as a capital letter in all instances.

    I do not have any Scottish names beginning with "Mac" nor Welsh surnames beginning "Ap" as in ApSimon. Are there any other combinations that one should be looking for?
     
  5. Susan48

    Susan48 LostCousins Superstar

    The 2 O'Briens on My Ancestors have retained the capital B, but all the Mc and Mac surnames have the middle capital altered to lower case - with one exception. McMeekan is italicised because I have corrected the surname from a wrongly transcribed version.
     
  6. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    Yes, I discovered the same with the additional 'corrected' fields below.

    The auto-correct feature in the main fields is generally very useful and definitely speeds up entering names - I wouldn't want to be without it!
     
  7. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Scottish and Irish names can be Mc or Mac interchangeably one is not Scottish and the other Irish. http://www.scottishhistory.com/articles/misc/macvsmc.html
     
    • Thanks! Thanks! x 1
  8. Gillian

    Gillian LostCousins Star

    All my 'McSomethings' have the 'S' as a small letter except, as Pauline also found, a mistranscribed one with a space - Mc Laughlin.
     

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