Maclean or MacLean

[Riverkilt]

My sense is that many families, like my family, are protective of the spelling of the family name.

My family name has survived in tact for ten generations through emmigration to Canada then to the United States. The family name survives with distant cousins back in Skye.

The correct spelling of the name survives because parents taught their children the correct spelling and the children valued the correct name for the family. Just as in the River Runs Through It example of the Macleans.

Just because some official spells a family name wrong doesn't mean the family is going to adopt that incorrect spelling. For ten generations of Macdonalds we have corrected errors and continued to spell our family name the way our ancestors have.

[JSFMACLJR]

Whether MacLean is spelled with an upper-case L or lower case; whether it is Mc or Mac--it matters not! All spellings are correct. The clan is Highland and Western Isles. My ancestors from Mull spelled the name McLean. Two generations after emigration, one branch ( that of my g-grandfather ) had changed the spelling to MacLean.

The Chief, BTW, uses a lower case L! So do all the chieftains, I believe. I am happy, thank you very much, with the capital L.

[T-Bone]

That's what I thought. I figured that it had much to do with emmigration.

[JSFMACLJR]

Jo Currie, in her short book, “MacLeans: A Biographical Dictionary of Mull People”, explains what I have said: spelling doesn’t matter! The following quotation, while mentioning specifically the Maclaines of Lochbuie, shows that all spellings of the great surname are correct.

"Since most records were entered by a schoolmaster, session clerk, or some such neutral scribe, it was his spelling, and not that of the subject which was used. Maclean can fluctuate between half a dozen spellings in the history of one family. Generally speaking, the spelling Maclaine or McLaine is associated with the Lochbuy estate, and when found in other areas often suggests a refugee from Lochbuy lands. Certain families in the early 19th century insisted on this spelling, but after 1850 gave it up and reverted to mcLean, which increasingly became MacLean, as all kinds of pedantic nonsense was written about the correctness of Mc or Mac. Their apostasy reflects the diminishing importance of the family of Lochbuy, or a wish for simplicity. People who emigrated in the 18th century with the name McLane, McLaine or Maclaine do not have to seek Lochbuy explanations. There would then be no significance in the spelling, for even the Maclaines of Lochbuy spelt their name in nine different ways. But those emigrating between 1800 and 1850 whith these spellings might have good reason to suppose that they came from Torosay parish and should be very wary if they hear a headless horseman galloping by (an intimation that there would be a Lochbuy death).

Every Maclean today, regardless of the spelling of the name today, should entertain all possible spellings in the past."

[xman]

Of the extant signatures, Shakespeare never signed his own name the same way twice.

It was much the same with Christopher Marlowe, in fact he even wrote his name as Marley a few times. This was just how it was and some of that persists only now we have become more rigid about maintaining a specific variation of some spelling while other branches of the same family will rigidly maintain a different spelling.