Macdonald (name)
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 or . The name is a patronym meaning 'son of Dòmhnall'. The personal name 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 . The name is also native to Ireland but of separate origin: the MacDonalds of  Munster were a sept of the O'Brian Clan and dynasty. 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 this data, the following frequency information can be collated: 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 See also. Ambiguous human name pages