MacDonald (surname)


MacDonald, Macdonald, and McDonald are surnames of both Irish and Scottish origin. In the Scottish Gaelic and Irish languages they are patronymic, referring to an ancestor with given name Donald.

Origins and variants

The surname is an Anglicised form of the Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic MacDhòmhnaill or Dòmhnallach. The name is a patronym meaning 'son of Dòmhnall'. The personal name Dòmhnall is composed of the elements 'world' and 'might rule'. According to Alex Woolf, the Gaelic personal name is probably a borrowing from the British Celtic Dyfnwal.
In the context of Scottish clans, the various forms of the name refer to one of the largest clans, Clan Donald. In Ireland the name is largely from this root but may sometimes be a synonym for MacDonnell, which itself may be of distinct Scottish Clan Donald galloglass or native Irish origins.

Frequency and distribution

In Scottish surname data, no distinction is made between, for instance, "Macdonald" and "MacDonald". According to these data, the following frequency information can be collated:
YearMacdonald Rank%freqMcDonald Rank%freq
1855–185821.23<50<0.30
193521.03<50<0.28
195830.98<50<0.26
1976100.59230.40
1990100.55320.35
1999–200190.55240.37
2014100.51300.32

Table references
Frequency data from England of 1891 shows a concentration of families bearing the "Macdonald" surname in Lancashire and Yorkshire with a lower frequency in the northernmost counties, but overall widespread distribution throughout the country. "McDonald" shares the same pattern of distribution. In contemporaneous data from the United States, coast-to-coast distribution of both "Macdonald" and "McDonald" appears in 1880. Looking back to 1840 in the United States, the prevalence of "McDonald" is far greater than that of "Macdonald", with concentration in the Ohio-Pennsylvania-New York corridor.

Notable people: MacDonald surname

Born before 1400

Born after 1400

Born after 1700

Born after 1800

Born after 1900

Born after 1950

Notable people: Macdonald surname

Born after 1700

Born after 1800

Born after 1900

Born after 1950

Notable people: McDonald surname

Born after 1800

Born after 1900

Born after 1950

Pseudonyms

Fictional characters