Hey, mac! the name Maccus, tenth to fifteenth centuries

Hey, Mac! The Name Maccus,

Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries

David E. Thornton

Department of History, Bilkent University, Ankara

The personal name Maccus occurs irregularly in English and other sources from the tenth century onwards and, while it has been the subject of a certain amount of passing discussion, the etymology of the name has not been satisfactorily established. Essentially, two explanations have been posited (one Scandinavian, the other Celtic) but neither has been pursued in any great detail. In this paper it is proposed to re-examine this rare but interesting name in the light of a survey of recorded forms, firstly as a personal name and subsequently

as a surname. While the various lists of forms given below as

Appendix I most certainly do not contain every possible instance of the name, they represent a greater sample than has hitherto been offered

and should therefore form a suitable basis for some general comments.1

Maccus as Personal Name and Surname

The pre-Conquest instances of the personal name Maccus—and those which occur in post-Conquest sources referring to pre-Conquest persons—indicate that the earliest forms were Maccus and Macus. The variant form Macbus is also found from the late eleventh and the twelfth centuries, where the orthographic ch must presumably represent medial velar [k] rather than palatal [tf] or spirant [x]; and in

the thirteenth century we find Mac/e145. The most obvious explanation

of the final -us is that it represents the Latin second declension masculine nominative ending; but, as the forms given in List 1 (pp. 85—88) demonstrate, it was not usually treated as such in the sources. Thus, not only is the -us retained in the handful of vernacular examples, but in Latin texts the nominative —us is given where other

This paper has grown out of work on one of the tenth-century bearers of the name Macczts. I am grateful to Oliver Padel, both for his extensive editorial input and for his help and comments at a much earlier stage in the research. However, all mistakes remain my own.